G4 Starting Up On It's Own

[A.T.]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone can help me. I have a G4 and 17' flat panel display and recently whenever I shut down, I'll come home and find it has restarted on it's own. I do usually just put it to sleep, but like to shut it down as well.

Cheers.

A.T.

 

[Juventuz]

Not to be mean but... you're sure you're chosing Shut Down and not Restart?

Don't laugh because I had a friend that was doing it.

 

[Godfather]

lol, both @ topic and answer!

I have a g4 dual 1.25, it never started on it's own (thank god)

 

[krimson]

i had a similar problem a few weeks ago... i couldn't shut down, no matter what I did.

What caused my problem was that the power cable for my printer was unplugged, but the USB cable was still plugged in. It's strange, but after I plugged the printer back in... problem solved.

Unplug all your firewire and usb devices and see if that helps. (As someone here suggested to me)

 

[encro]

If you have OS X 10.3 do you have an automatic startup time set in the Energy Saver .prefPane in System Preferences? It's under the 'Schedule Tab'

Have you installed 'iBeeZee', 'Koingo's Alarm Clock Pro' or 'iRooster'?

 

[BrianKonarsMac]

i have my computer setup to turn on every day at 11 and shut down and 1 am, you might want to check the startup settings in your system preferences.

 

[whooleytoo]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone can help me. I have a G4 and 17' flat panel display and recently whenever I shut down, I'll come home and find it has restarted on it's own. I do usually just put it to sleep, but like to shut it down as well.

As others have pointed out, it could be a scheduled startup - look in the Energy Saver preference pane. There's also an option there for the Power button to put the iMac to sleep rather than power down, might that be what you're doing?

Also, what USB devices do you have plugged in? Apple removed the power button on the keyboards due to a bug where some powered USB devices (the iSub springs to mind) could cause the machine to startup while attached.

 

[Needer of Much]

I don't know if the iBook you have is like mine, but I can just take the battery out. It cant start up without any power

 

[Sun Baked]

Did you try disabling the "Touch Switch" on the LCD display?

Some of those are sensitive enough to randomly start/shutdown the machine with nobody in the room.

 

[Juventuz]

lol, both @ topic and answer!

I have a g4 dual 1.25, it never started on it's own (thank god)

Hey it's true... for about 3 days he was rebooting his machine.

My roommate in college had a mac, don't remember which one it was back in 95, and we could turn his on with the tv remote.

 

[JOD8FY]

Wow, a posessed mac! Have you installed any software updates recently...? I guess Apple must have tried to implement their "think different" idea into their computers!

JOD8FY

 

[whooleytoo]

Wow, a posessed mac! Have you installed any software updates recently...? I guess Apple must have tried to implement their "think different" idea into their computers!

His isn't the only one!

I have an IR received with my iMac for playing CDs and DVDs, but it picks up my TV remote's signals and beeps and wakes from sleep randomly.

Even funnier, I noticed my iMac doing strange things (apps launching etc) at random intervals even when I wasn't using the TV remote. I only figured out what was happening when someone on TV shouted the line: "We don't have the time!!" and the iMac replied "It's nine fifteen"!! (I'd left speech recognition turned on!)

 

[A.T.]

Thanks guys for the solutions. After doing a bit of searching I found a related post on the Apple discussions website and a solution :

(quote)
"For some reason, at shutdown some USB-connected printers seem to send (or reflect) a signal via USB to the Mac which it interprets as a boot command - similar to what a power button on a keyboard would send. This may happen only at the moment the USB bus is de-powered at shutdown - but is enough to cause the Mac to auto-reboot.

This seems to happen more if the printer is connected to the keyboard. Relatedly -
Article #58649 - Apple Pro Keyboard: Devices Connected

One solution is to disconnect the printer before shutting down the Mac.

Another can be to use a self-powered USB hub between the printer and the Mac - such can sometimes filter out that signal. Some self-powered hubs have a small selector switch on the side or back, which allows them to be set to use bus power or self-power; that should not be set to bus."

Hope someone else finds this useful.

A.T.

 

[Koodauw]

Humm that is very interesting about the USB printers doing that. Very interesting. Weird too. I was going to suggest poltergeist.