iMac Starts Up Automatically at Midnight. Why?

I have the same problem, but I can't find "com.apple.AutoWake.plist" in preference??

Further no eyetv, no harddisk no timemachine.

It totally agree. I don't have EyeTV either and still have the same problem. 1:00AM or a few minutes over, the machine just boots.

Please take a look at the bottom of the thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6348124#6348124
Maybe this will help you.

Do you have entries in iCal for those days with alarms that might wake the system up?

Thank you so much. This solved my problem. My brand new MacBook 2.0/1GB/80 kept starting up every night at 1AM.

I have tested it by putting the clock back to two minutes before 1AM, before and after the fix. With the fix it does not start up by itself.

Is anyone still having this problem? It hadn't happened to me for a while and I thought the issue might have been fixed with 10.5.2 but last night my iMac started up by itself at midnight again. I have already tried all the suggestions mentioned here... What was a bit strange is that I had my iPod Nano (new version) connected and I haven't left that connected for a while - perhaps that has something to do with it?

1. According to a Mac-related blog the wakeup issue was not removed in 10.5.2. Also the notes on the 10.5.2 Update do not mention a fix for this problem.
2. Check out your console-log to find out the exact time your Mac awoke. If its 1am you can bet it wasn't your iPods fault. Then you should try the systematic fix I posted above. That has helped most people. Don't forget to purge PRAM. To figure out wheather you successfully purged it, I suggest you turn off the volume before restart. If the Volume is back on after you did the PRAM-reset, it was successfull.
Good luck,
shoot_me

P.S.: @APPLE: come on, you should be able to fix this issue, it's bugging a whole bunch of people and dents my pride when I talk to my friends about the best OS there is.

Thanks! It was and always is at midnight on the dot - it's in my bedroom and wakes me up if I have gone to sleep before then. It's so bizarre that it will either wake up or actually switch itself on! Will try out those fixes again - I guess it's all we can do...

Hi people
got an iMac now and it was woken several times during the night with this problem. I have reset the PRAM but that did not work - just woke me with a lOUd dong!
I will look further back for other help in the thread, but appart from turning off the power at the plug, i'm scuppered too
Good luck

PS midnight it wakes
x

Definitely a bug in the energy saver scheduler. Been having the same problem ever since I scheduled a shut down for the middle of the night and then cleared it a few days later (have NEVER scheduled an auto-start). Initially though I'd mistakenly hit restart but checking the logs confirmed I'd been hit by the 1am pixies.

Deleting/renaming /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist and clearing the PRAM seems to have fixed it.

Glad I've left my MBP running Tiger. Had nothing but problems with Leopard - bugs that should have been fixed if they hadn't been concentrating on the iPhone.

Hi Andy
What if you don't have the file: "Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist" in the computer and the bugger still wants to wake from off and restarts from the plug being turned on.
and no tv anything
nothing scheduled
just midnight pixies
sledge hammer?
glad yours worked though and i am starting to regret the problems that are stacking with leopard now i am taking notice.

x

Hi! I checked the console log today: and tonight the system starts up at 2:00:17 am! Living in Hamburg, Germany we have DST since last sunday. We are 2 hours ahead related to UTC. I'm afraid it's not a midnight problem! But I'll purge the PRAM and delete autoWake.plist!
Is it possible to read the content written the AutoWake.plist?
Thanks and quiet nights to everybody!
Reiniauge

There are a lot of pages out there regarding this issue. C'mon Apple!?!?

When we switched to daylight saving times (summer time) here in Denmark, it simply offset the start-up by an hour. In other words it seems to be based on an interval rather than a time.

I'm a Mac geek but nothing in the system log lends a clue. It boots from shut down status... from "turned off"!! This is driving me bananas.

OS updates haven't fixed this.
EFI Firmware update didn't fix this.
Unplugging ALL external peripherals didn't fix this.
Resetting, purging cleaning all kinds of caches and Pram didn't fix this.
Reinstalling OSX didn't fix this.
Reading page up and page down of forums did't fix this.
Disabling Bluetooth didn't fix this.
Checked Energy saver.
Checked all auto-updates on software that can auto-update.
Checked to see how much I paid for this.

Pull the plug every night man, it works like a charm 😟

There is a a workaround which proves to me that it's a bug.

Set the wake time for when the machine will most likely be on anyway e.g. evening (or whatever suits best). It then won't wake at midnight GMT. Before I did this it woke at midnight like clockwork!