Processor with a will of its own

[Lee_N]

Hello,
I have upgraded my box, MB CPU and memory (have done this many times without
a hitch), have been running Vista 64 bit very well. What is happening at
first I thought was it was awakning from sleep on it's own, BUT what is
happening is every 5 to 10 minutes, the processor comes on and does disk
activity for around 2 minutes then goes back to sleep. During this the
monitor is dark, and by doing my regular wake up routine, hit space bar or
move the mouse, these movements do nothing and will not wake up the
computer. Then, when it's finished whatever it's doing, and goes back to
sleep, I can wake it normally.
I've run all kinds of scans for virus and malware (OneCare Live and also
PREVX Edge with both have been vey efficient in catching the baddies). I
can't find any task that says it lets this happen, and don't know of anyway
to log something to tell me what is happening.

Any help or suggestions? Please don't treat me like a newbie!

LeeN

 

[Alias]

Hello,
I have upgraded my box, MB CPU and memory (have done this many times
without
a hitch), have been running Vista 64 bit very well. What is happening at
first I thought was it was awakning from sleep on it's own, BUT what is
happening is every 5 to 10 minutes, the processor comes on and does disk
activity for around 2 minutes then goes back to sleep. During this the
monitor is dark, and by doing my regular wake up routine, hit space bar or
move the mouse, these movements do nothing and will not wake up the
computer. Then, when it's finished whatever it's doing, and goes back to
sleep, I can wake it normally.
I've run all kinds of scans for virus and malware (OneCare Live and also
PREVX Edge with both have been vey efficient in catching the baddies). I
can't find any task that says it lets this happen, and don't know of anyway
to log something to tell me what is happening.

Any help or suggestions? Please don't treat me like a newbie!

LeeN

It's probably MS phoning home, indexing and/or defragging your hard
drive. If everything works as usual, I wouldn't worry about it although,
in all cases, back up is a computer user's best friend.

Alias

 

[Andrew McLaren]

first I thought was it was awakning from sleep on it's own, BUT what is

happening is every 5 to 10 minutes, the processor comes on and does disk
activity for around 2 minutes then goes back to sleep. During this the
monitor is dark, and by doing my regular wake up routine, hit space bar or
move the mouse, these movements do nothing and will not wake up the
computer. Then, when it's finished whatever it's doing, and goes back to
sleep, I can wake it normally.

Diagnosing power issues can be pretty complex, because so many different
components (both hardware and software) can interact with the power
management.

A few places to look for clues:

1) start Command Prompt as administrator, run the command:
C:\>powercfg -lastwake
This will show what last woke the machine.

2) run this command to see devices which will wake the system:
C:\>powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

3) Look in the System Event log for Event ID 1 from source
"Microsoft-Windows-Power-Troubleshooter". Vista should log this event
for each sleep/wake transition, with details about the event.


Other folks may have additional ideas, hope this helps a bit.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[pupick]

Is your BIOS set to allow wake from LAN?

 

[Lee_N]

Hello,
Yes I did that. I can't seem to explain it is not WAKING UP, the processor
itself is turning on, doing some disk activity, the going back to sleep
after a couple minutes.

 

[Len Mattix]

Doesn''t that contridict what you said in your original post that during
these periods of activity your normal "computer wake up" options did not
work. Sounds like the computer thinks it is awake at least on some level.
It may not register in windows as it could be some bios setting that is set
to start the computer but fails?

Good luck, but I would check the bios and not windows to resolve this issue.
Maybe your MB mfg has some helpful information either in their literature or
see if someone else has this typ issue through checking out any forums the
MB mfg may have.

Len