Paul H said:
I put my Vista Home Premium laptop to "sleep" at night, leaving Windows
Mail
and other applications running. The next morning it has turned itself
back
on. I unplug the Ethernet wire because I'm concerned about security. If
it
turns on by itself, how do I know what it will also do? What's going on?
Vista is sooooo annoying.
If you don't shut down as opposed to putting it to sleep, any background
activity might turn it back on. For example, by default, Windows Vista is
set to defrag the hard drive automatically at certain times depending upon
overall fragmentation. Also, if the "Wake on land" feature is enabled in
the system BIOS, even though you have disconnected the Ethernet cable, the
process itself is not disabled. There are many applications that routinely
check for updates and the act of trying to check at a specific time, might
wake the system.
Unless you have malware on your system, because you are disconnected from
the Internet, there's not too much danger but unless you can find every item
that might become active, you'd have to shut the system down completely to
make absolutely certain it doesn't come out of sleep mode. Note also, some
systems can wake by touching the keyboard, mouse or in the case of a laptop,
the touchpad and this can sometimes be triggered by vibration.
