Help! Computer randomly turns on

GigaChunk

GigaChunk

New member
So yesterday I was playing GW2 when suddenly my PC just powers off. Hoping it wasn't anything serious, I powered it on again, and carried on using it as normal till the end of the day. Then, late at night whilst I was lying in bed, it decides to turn itself on. I got up and turned on the monitor, but there was no signal. I tried pushing the off button on the front panel, but nothing happened so I had to turn the psu off with the switch at the back. This morning I woke up and turned the switch back on, and the computer powers up without me actually pushing the on switch on the front panel. It happens within a second, and doesn't give me a chance to turn it on properly. The post readout on the motherboard doesn't come on at all but all the fans spin up. I've tried using different power outlets but this makes no difference. Now, to me this seems like a faulty psu, which is very annoying. I purchased it from scan 2-3 months ago, so RMA'ing it shouldn't be an issue. If anyone has any ideas otherwise, they would gladly be appreciated. Cheers :)
 
Could be a fault PSU, I don't have much knowledge on that brand either so I'm unaware of the reliability of them (that could be your problem).

As for turning on you make have wake on LAN set, which starts the PC whenever it receives a packet. You can disable it in the BIOS and on power management in Windows.

But that wouldn't make it turn off so it may be due to a component fault.

I would also check for loose connections on the power leads or if anything could be shorting the front panel switch connectors.
 
PC power and cooling are supposed to have very good reliability, so it may just be that I'm unlucky. I wouldn't buy the same psu again though, the cable braiding isn't fantastic. I can't even get into the Bios at the moment, the power supply turns the PC on as soon as I flick the switch, and doesn't respond to any buttons I press.
 
Nah, I haven't got a surge protector. I did just try powering on the psu without the 24-pin installed and nothing happened. The trouble is, I haven't got another psu to test it with

EDIT: Okay, that was extremely odd, I think you may be right about the mobo being the problem. I plugged the pc back in (all the connections, dvi, ethernet etc) and the pc stopped doing the random startup thing. So I powered the system on as normal, and was greeted by a message saying the amount of system memory had changed. So I pressed F1 to go to setup, and then a message came up saying 'auto bios update'. It then proceeded to flash the bios, and when it got to 100%, the pc shut down. I restarted it, and everything works perfectly now. In short, I have absolutely no idea what the balls just happened to my pc :)
 
Last edited:
Ok, this problem seems to have started again and is even more persistent. It started playing up again around a month ago, but I was able to temporarily fix the random starting up by flashing the bios to a different version (earlier or later). However, this isn't lasting very long any more (or even working at all) for example I flashed the bios yesterday morning which cured the startup issues, but it powered on the pc again just as I had turned it off :( this is really beginning to bug me, especially when all the fans decide to power up in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever. Any help would be massively appreciated guys :)
 
You may want to call Ghostbusters... :p

It seems your mobo is causing it though. Have you tried removing CMOS/rewiring the connections/checking for possible short-circuits because of faulty isolation on any wires?
 
UPDATE:
Reset CMOS this morning which cured the random startups. However, now the bios is now limiting the cpu multiplier to 38 (I have no clue why). Any Z77a owners want to give me a hand?

Thanks
 
Seems pretty unlikely to me, power's never tripped whilst I was using the pc, and aren't power supplies supposed to prevent those? Could be possible I guess
 
Overlock is fine, ran prime for 12 hours and ran IBT for 40 cycles on maximum. Besides, unstable cpu wouldn't cause my pc to short out and turn itself on
 
GigaChunk said:
Seems pretty unlikely to me, power's never tripped whilst I was using the pc, and aren't power supplies supposed to prevent those? Could be possible I guess
Click to expand...

You're not running a surge protector, that's what they are for.

A mate of mine had the same thing you did, random turn ons, he wasn't running a surge protector either. RMA'd the mobo and it works flawlessly now.
 
SPS said:
You're not running a surge protector, that's what they are for.

A mate of mine had the same thing you did, random turn ons, he wasn't running a surge protector either. RMA'd the mobo and it works flawlessly now.
Click to expand...

Ah, that may be the problem then. Thanks for the advice :)
 
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