PC turns on spontaneously

[The Golfer's Wife]

I have XP on a desktop. I had XP Home Edition on a 4gb disk drive
which has now been removed and replaced with an 80gb drive and XP Pro
installed on it.

I had problems with the original setup whereby the computer power
would turn on and boot up and now this has recurred. Can someone
please help me with a solution? I am wondering if there is something
amiss in the motherboard.

Cheers

The Golfer's Wife

 

[Guest]

I have XP on a desktop. I had XP Home Edition on a 4gb disk drive
which has now been removed and replaced with an 80gb drive and XP Pro
installed on it.

I had problems with the original setup whereby the computer power
would turn on and boot up and now this has recurred. Can someone
please help me with a solution? I am wondering if there is something
amiss in the motherboard.

Cheers

The Golfer's Wife

Check your BIOS settings for Wake ON LAN or Wake On WAN.
Tap the F2 on Boot up until you get the BIOS menu and check the power Option
and Disable Wake Up on LAN if it is enabled.
Open a Notepad, customize or minimize to the taskbar as you will need it
later for this step to copy the error message on it.
Open a run command and type in:
eventvwr.msc click [OK] you will get the Event viewer control Panel.
click on each of these:
Application
System
Security
Look in the right Pane/window for error message with red (X) or Yellow
exclamation mark /!\ , double click each one to get more info about the
causer.
On the Event error properties message you will see:
Up Arrow
Down arrow
Two pages
Click on the two pages to copy the error message then bring up the Notepad
you opened earlier and right click on the first line and select Paste from
the list, this will paste the error message on a Notepad.
Please don't duplicate the error message one of each kind will be sufficient.
HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us
HTH.
Let us know.
Regards,
nass

 

[The Golfer's Wife]

I have XP on a desktop. I had XP Home Edition on a 4gb disk drive
which has now been removed and replaced with an 80gb drive and XP Pro
installed on it.

I had problems with the original setup whereby the computer power
would turn on and boot up and now this has recurred. Can someone
please help me with a solution? I am wondering if there is something
amiss in the motherboard.

Cheers

The Golfer's Wife

Check your BIOS settings for Wake ON LAN or Wake On WAN.
Tap the F2 on Boot up until you get the BIOS menu and check the power Option
and Disable Wake Up on LAN if it is enabled.
Open a Notepad, customize or minimize to the taskbar as you will need it
later for this step to copy the error message on it.
Open a run command and type in:
eventvwr.msc click [OK] you will get the Event viewer control Panel.
click on each of these:
Application
System
Security
Look in the right Pane/window for error message with red (X) or Yellow
exclamation mark /!\ , double click each one to get more info about the
causer.
On the Event error properties message you will see:
Up Arrow
Down arrow
Two pages
Click on the two pages to copy the error message then bring up the Notepad
you opened earlier and right click on the first line and select Paste from
the list, this will paste the error message on a Notepad.
Please don't duplicate the error message one of each kind will be sufficient.
HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us
HTH.
Let us know.
Regards,
nass

Hello nass
Thank you for the detailed advice. Unfortunately whoever loaded XP
Pro onto my computer when the new hard drive was installed seems to
have bypassed the bootup information (except for a 1-second flash)
that used to be there before after the motherboard name was displayed.
So I have no time to press F2 at all. I know how to get into the BIOS
settings, and I could have followed your instructions if I had been
able to. Can you tell me of any alternative way of doing this?

I did go into the eventvwr.msc page and found two yellow exclamation
marks with warnings. Both were the same and both on the same day (the
day after the installation). The error number is ID 1517. You will
probably be familiar with this error number and in my case it said
that "Windows saved user 6RBWRU36HGRYM5T\Tom registry while an
application or service was still using the registry during log off.
The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The
registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.
This is often caused by services running as a user account, try
configuring the services to run in either the Local Service or Network
Service account."

I don't know how to do do this configuring - can you help? Do you
think this is the cause of the power coming on randomly after shut
down. I didn't explain that the problem is not constant or continuous
but occurs randomly. The computer is my husband's and he is the sole
administrator. The computer is not on a network.

I am now experimenting with logging on and logging off, instead of
ignoring this option. Do you think this will help? My husband is
not at all computer-literate, although he is quite a competent
operator and capable of data entry and spread-sheet operation.

I have no idea why I cannot see the computer information on-screen
before Windows begins to boot. Is it anything to worry about?

Thank you for your patience and help.

Cheers

The Golfer's Wife

 

[Mark F.]

Hello nass
Thank you for the detailed advice. Unfortunately whoever loaded XP
Pro onto my computer when the new hard drive was installed seems to
have bypassed the bootup information (except for a 1-second flash)
that used to be there before after the motherboard name was displayed.
So I have no time to press F2 at all. I know how to get into the BIOS
settings, and I could have followed your instructions if I had been
able to. Can you tell me of any alternative way of doing this?

When you see the first 80 x 25 text screen start pressing the F2 key (tap,
tap, tap,...,).

Works for the F8 key to get to the boot menu too. (c:

Mark

 

[Guest]

I have XP on a desktop. I had XP Home Edition on a 4gb disk drive
which has now been removed and replaced with an 80gb drive and XP Pro
installed on it.

I had problems with the original setup whereby the computer power
would turn on and boot up and now this has recurred. Can someone
please help me with a solution? I am wondering if there is something
amiss in the motherboard.

Cheers

The Golfer's Wife

Check your BIOS settings for Wake ON LAN or Wake On WAN.
Tap the F2 on Boot up until you get the BIOS menu and check the power Option
and Disable Wake Up on LAN if it is enabled.
Open a Notepad, customize or minimize to the taskbar as you will need it
later for this step to copy the error message on it.
Open a run command and type in:
eventvwr.msc click [OK] you will get the Event viewer control Panel.
click on each of these:
Application
System
Security
Look in the right Pane/window for error message with red (X) or Yellow
exclamation mark /!\ , double click each one to get more info about the
causer.
On the Event error properties message you will see:
Up Arrow
Down arrow
Two pages
Click on the two pages to copy the error message then bring up the Notepad
you opened earlier and right click on the first line and select Paste from
the list, this will paste the error message on a Notepad.
Please don't duplicate the error message one of each kind will be sufficient.
HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us
HTH.
Let us know.
Regards,
nass

Hello nass
Thank you for the detailed advice. Unfortunately whoever loaded XP
Pro onto my computer when the new hard drive was installed seems to
have bypassed the bootup information (except for a 1-second flash)
that used to be there before after the motherboard name was displayed.
So I have no time to press F2 at all. I know how to get into the BIOS
settings, and I could have followed your instructions if I had been
able to. Can you tell me of any alternative way of doing this?

I did go into the eventvwr.msc page and found two yellow exclamation
marks with warnings. Both were the same and both on the same day (the
day after the installation). The error number is ID 1517. You will
probably be familiar with this error number and in my case it said
that "Windows saved user 6RBWRU36HGRYM5T\Tom registry while an
application or service was still using the registry during log off.
The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The
registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.
This is often caused by services running as a user account, try
configuring the services to run in either the Local Service or Network
Service account."

I don't know how to do do this configuring - can you help? Do you
think this is the cause of the power coming on randomly after shut
down. I didn't explain that the problem is not constant or continuous
but occurs randomly. The computer is my husband's and he is the sole
administrator. The computer is not on a network.

I am now experimenting with logging on and logging off, instead of
ignoring this option. Do you think this will help? My husband is
not at all computer-literate, although he is quite a competent
operator and capable of data entry and spread-sheet operation.

I have no idea why I cannot see the computer information on-screen
before Windows begins to boot. Is it anything to worry about?

Thank you for your patience and help.

Cheers

The Golfer's Wife

Hi,
It depends on your BIOS type, you can Tap F2 constantly after you press the
Power Button or F10 or F8, try all then click on System Configuration and
select Built-in Device Options and there Disable the Wake On LAN and also
LAN/WAN Switching.
Then we need the complete error message by double click the error and you
will get a pop-up window describing the error , on it there is a Double page
Icon click on this and bring up the Notepad and right click inside it and
select Paste, send the text in your next post.
Warning error 1517 in Event Viewer after first restart
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810616

Troubleshooting profile unload issues
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837115

Please read this article as a reference it does not mean it will apply to
you or you have the same issue, but it is advisable to scan this machine for
both malware and viruses by whichever software you have or from another
vendors.
The computer may automatically restart, or you may receive a "serious error"
message or a Stop error message in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, or in
Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894278
HTH.
nass

 

[dobey]

<The Golfer's Wife> wrote in message

Hello nass
Thank you for the detailed advice. Unfortunately whoever loaded XP
Pro onto my computer when the new hard drive was installed seems to
have bypassed the bootup information (except for a 1-second flash)
that used to be there before after the motherboard name was displayed.
So I have no time to press F2 at all. I know how to get into the BIOS
settings, and I could have followed your instructions if I had been
able to. Can you tell me of any alternative way of doing this?

<snip>

Just reboot and keep tapping F2 as the PC restarts.

It sounds like whoever might have enabled Quick Power On Self Test. Once the
PC has been running smoothly, no need to check the memory every time it
boots.

Your 4GB drive would have been relatively slow also.

Apart from OEM builds, I don't think it's possible to bypass the startup
screens.

Sometimes the Pause button will interupt the boot process if yopu wish to
read something.