My computer keeps turning itself on at random times.

For the past week or so my iMac has also been waking up in the middle of the night, and I don't know why. When this happens, the screen saver doesn't kick in either. Could one of the OS updates I installed last week (e.g. QuickTime) be the culprit? I am running OS 10.4.11 on this machine.

New Apple Slogan:
"It Just Turns On"

This has started happening to me too since about 3 weeks ago. I have one of the first Mac Pro's and for the most part it's been problem free. But now after a complete shutdown in the morning I come home to find it turned on about an hour before I get there. It's convenient yes but I don't really want that.

I've also been having major lockup issues too that I can't seem to get fixed, anyone experiencing this as well?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6993482#6993482

Thanks
rr

I'm far from competent with MP's yet, but if I had your problem I would unplug all devices (including the UPS) except keyboard / mouse, make sure the console log was clear, and check it when it does 'turn on' by itself. I'd then delete .plist files from programs which can turn the machine on by themselves even if they say they are disabled for auto or scheduled turn-on. If it is waking from sleep instead of a full power-off, I'd watch for a cat walking on the keyboard at night (this happened to me, was driving me crazy.)

John F

Weird stuff. Just discovered my Mac Pro doing the same thing for the first time today. Turned itself on from a totally shutdown state at 4 pm while I was away at work. Checked the console log and it just looks like a normal startup...

+1/24/08 4:00:23 PM com.apple.launchctl.System[2] launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist+
+1/24/08 4:00:23 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight+
+1/24/08 4:00:23 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.ntp.ntpd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight+
+1/24/08 4:00:36 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] VMware Fusion 62573: Starting VMware Fusion:+
+1/24/08 4:00:37 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmmon.kext loaded successfully+
+1/24/08 4:00:37 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmci.kext loaded successfully+
+1/24/08 4:00:37 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmioplug.kext loaded successfully+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] kextload: /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/kexts/vmnet.kext loaded successfully+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Internet Software Consortium DHCP Server 2.0+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 The Internet Software Consortium.+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] All rights reserved.+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Please contribute if you find this software useful.+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Configured subnet: 192.168.243.0+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Setting vmnet-dhcp IP address: 192.168.243.254+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Opened:+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Recving on VNet/vmnet8/192.168.243.0+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Sending on VNet/vmnet8/192.168.243.0+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Internet Software Consortium DHCP Server 2.0+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 The Internet Software Consortium.+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] All rights reserved.+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Please contribute if you find this software useful.+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Configured subnet: 172.16.94.0+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Setting vmnet-dhcp IP address: 172.16.94.254+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Opened:+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Recving on VNet/vmnet1/172.16.94.0+
+1/24/08 4:00:38 PM com.vmware.launchd.vmware[46] Sending on VNet/vmnet1/172.16.94.0+

I realize this is a lot of VMWare activity, but it's the same stuff that happens during any startup for me, accidental or not, at this point.

Might be the SMC...occurred to me since that can have an obvious influence on startups and such. Anecdotally this story confirms the possibility:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=386727

It's been happening to my iMac as well except as soon as I installed EyeTV, it started doing it. I don't know if it has an automatic power-on mode set on or what, but every night my computer turns on at 12:34 AM. It's driving me nuts.

The boys over at xlr8yourmac have it narrowed down to the video card.
Check out www.xlr8yourmac.com
It's on the main page. Seems there are problems with display corruption and artifacts, as well as crashing and sleep/wake issues.

I was going to purchase a new MacPro, but will wait until they fix the problem and the nVidea cards are ready to ship.

Good luck guys.

I think this may be a separate issue you're referring to here. I've heard of the rebooting on sleep and graphics card problems, but that sounds like a totally different thing than what we're having here. Our problem is that our machines are turning themselves on from sleep or a dead shutdown at regular intervals - not crashing, rebooting or having graphic artifacts/problems.

Also, the fact that we have several people not running the new Harpertown Mac Pro's experiencing this problem, I think it's safe to say it is not early-2008 Mac Pro specific.

Just want to add my 2GHz Mac Pro to the list of computers experiencing this problem, for me it's 4AM every morning and the computer will wake its self both from sleep and from being shut down, if I turn it off it just turns its self on again 15 minutes later. I've tried checking every program which could be scheduling this and found nothing to cause it, & have resorted to unplugging the computer to keep it from doing its thing. Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated, its driving me crazy.

Message was edited by: rarebitfiend

Message was edited by: rarebitfiend

Can you folks check something for me after this happens to you?
At the Finder press the combination:

CMD-SHIFT-G

It should open a small window where you type:

/var/log

press return and it will take you to the log folder. Find the system.log file and double-click on it. It will open the system log in a console window. Scroll it back to where the startup happened (say at 4pm if that's when it happens) and see if there are any interesting messages logged during that startup. Sometimes programs leave little messages about what is happening. Paste anything interesting back here.

Thinking about this further, one more experiment for you that have this:
Shut down the computer and remove the power cord. Wait 5 minutes. Plug the cord back in. Does the unit auto power on when it should not?

I had the same problem(starting up randomly) and I have a EyeTv as well, first of all I resorted to just unplugging it but that was just a pain so instead I just used "carbon copy cloner" and backed all my stuff up to another hard drive, then formatted the Mac OS X drive( for the 3rd time due to other problems) and that fixed it, although its not practical to everyone to do.

Two more (long shot) suggestions for someone who has this alot:

1. Do you have Airport? If so, try turning it off.

2. Have Bluetooth? Try first setting the prefs to not be Discoverable. Second turn it off. Two different steps, not at the same time.

Make any difference?

Try one last thing.
In the Energy Saver panel, set a time to turn the system on while the system is already on. Just to get it out of the default nothing mode. Does that stop it?
I'd guess that you could tell if you set this then change your time 2 minutes before when it normally starts up (4pm for some of you) and see if it does...

I couldn't sleep my G4, it would immediately wake and go in to a cycle of wake, sleep, wake, sleep, etc. The tip below to set a wake time, save preferences, then unset that seemed to fix this. Hopefully this won't come back.

I also noticed that "wake on ethernet network administrator access" etc. were also checked. I'm sure I had unchecked those.