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Mac asking for a password and then shutting down on its own without being touched

S

Sluchbox

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 7, 2021
50
25
Over the past week or so I have woken up in the morning at least three times to find that my Mac Mini was shut off. When restarting it says that it wasn’t shut down correctly. I know for a fact it wasn’t caused by a power outage because I didn’t have to set the time on my appliances like I always do when the power goes out.

So tonight I actually see what the problem is. While sitting in my living room I could see into my office that the monitor just randomly turned on, even though no one was in that room to wake it up. It was asking for the password and at the bottom of the screen there was text saying something along the lines of if I don’t know my password I could shut it down.

I purposely didn’t touch anything just to see what would happen. Sure enough, when I returned a few minutes later the Mac Mini was turned off.

Does anyone know what is going on? Could this be a bug with the new operating system update? This is a 2018 Mac mini which has always worked flawlessly, this problem is new this past week.
 
I suppose Remote Login/Management or Network Account or Profile or Wake of network access are enabled.
Check  –> System Preferences –> on the Menu bar View –> Customise –> Make sure that there aren't "Profile" section (as well as in your main System Preferences window)

 –> System Preferences –> Battery –> Disable "Wake for network access" and "Enable Power Nap"

 –> System Preferences –> Users & Groups –> Make sure that there aren't any unknown users available.

 –> System Preferences –> Sharing –> Disable "Remote Login", "Remote Management", "Screen Sharing".

And also quite reasonable will be to check Mac for dodgy software (it can be at /Applications or ~/Applications but before that enable "show hidden files" by pressing Cmd+Shift+. (period)
 
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Thank you so much for your extensive reply. I do not have a Battery option since it's a desktop, but I found the same settings in Energy Saver. Only "Enable Power Nap" was turned on, so I turned it off like you said.

Users & Groups only has me listed there, the Guest account is turned Off.

Under Sharing, everything is Off except "AirPlay Receiver". Should I turned that off?

I did not see anything that looked strange in any Application folder.

When I turned my computer back on this morning it had the same Login screen, but it did not have the sentence at the bottom that I saw last night saying something along the lines of if I don’t know my password I could shut it down.

This is just so odd, and starting to worry me. Are there any free virus apps that could help? Or other options?
 
What user-input devices are connected? Are they wired or wireless?

As an experiment, you can try disconnecting each device overnite, and see if the problem recurs or not. If not, then the disconnected device could be producing spurious signals that appear to the computer as real user input.

Mice, in particular, can do this, if there is mechanical vibration that causes it to move, however slightly. I've also seen wireless devices do this, but never figured out exactly why. It may be radio interference, or something else that causes them to lose their wireless connection, then reconnect.

If you have wired devices and a USB hub, also consider the possibility the hub is problematic, or USB cables.
 
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Nothing is connected to my computer other than a monitor with an HDMI cable and an ethernet cable.

Both the mouse and keyboard are connected via Bluetooth, it’s a basic Apple keyboard and an older Magic Mouse, the one that uses two AA batteries.

As far as software, I really don’t have much installed. When I got the computer years ago I downloaded Chrome, QuickBooks, and an Adobe PDF viewer. That’s it, I haven’t downloaded any apps since.

I will try disconnecting one at a time overnight like you recommended. But I am curious, I could understand that a device wakes the computer. What I can’t understand is why it’s shutting down.
 
Sluchbox said:
I will try disconnecting one at a time overnight like you recommended. But I am curious, I could understand that a device wakes the computer. What I can’t understand is why it’s shutting down.
Click to expand...
You posted this:
It was asking for the password and at the bottom of the screen there was text saying something along the lines of if I don’t know my password I could shut it down.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with that dialog, nor do I know what the exact text was, so it might help if you posted the exact text on that screen. Seeing the exact text could explain things, or be a clue to something else.

If there's a failsafe timeout of some kind on the password dialog, then it's possible it would automatically shutdown if nothing was entered before the timeout expired. Again, I'm not familiar with the dialog, so I'm speculating. However, it's not unreasonable for security dialogs to have timeouts.

It might also be useful if you posted what your security settings are, and what the OS version is, so readers have a context for what's happening. Someone might know something, like a bug specific to an OS version, that the rest of us are unaware of.
 
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It was pure luck that I saw my monitor turn on last night. The other 3 times it must have happened while I was in bed, and I only know it happened due to the computer being off in the morning. I didn't think to take a picture last night, and now I am in a bad spot because I don't know if I will ever see it again. If I do, I will definitely take a pic and post it.

It is a Mac Mini 2018 running MacOS Monterey 12.1 (21C52). I am not sure what security settings to post.

turbineseaplane said:
This situation is sketchy

Makes me concerned you have some malware installed
Click to expand...

It does seem sketchy. I haven't even thought about viruses or malware since I switched to Mac 13 years ago. I remember there were programs to use on Windows to scan for them, are there any recommended programs for Mac?

I appreciate everyone's help with this.
 
I found this in a Google image search, I am 95% sure this is the message I saw.

Screen Shot 2022-01-28 at 12.56.51 PM.png
 
I'd do a restore from a recent backup, before this started happening. This may be a malware infection. Weird for sure. Download a free malware app called "Malwarebytes" and scan your disk...
 
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Sluchbox said:
It is a Mac Mini 2018 running MacOS Monterey 12.1 (21C52). I am not sure what security settings to post.
Click to expand...
The ones I was thinking of have to do with what happens after some time interval of inactivity. The options are usually things like screensaver, display off, and sleep. The security aspect is whether to require a password on reactivation.

Those would usually be in various Preferences panes, but they've moved around across OS versions, and I don't know where they are in Monterey. They could be in the power settings, privacy, or other panes I'm not sure of.

You probably don't need to look for any of them yet, until after you've done the device disconnect overnight. If that doesn't show anything different, it probably wouldn't hurt to run something like the aforementioned Malwarebytes.
 
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This morning the computer was off again. After that I installed and ran Malwarebytes as recommended. I gave it full disk access. Results are 0.

So do you guys think it's safe to say that it is not malware/virus/etc? That is my real concern. If it's just a bug then I don't mind nearly as much.

Screen Shot 2022-01-29 at 8.00.47 AM.png
 
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chown33 said:
You're running Monterey 12.1, so at this point it might be worthwhile to update to 12.2, which is a bug-fix release:
Click to expand...
I didn’t even realize there was an update, I thought it updated itself automatically.

I installed the new update and I’m hoping this will fix it. Either way I will report back in case anyone else has this issue.

EDIT
I don't want to keep bumping this so I will just edit this post to say that this morning the computer was off so the update did not fix it. I also want to say that it has been off every morning, so this is happening every night. When it first started it only happened every few days.

EDIT 2
Now it's happening even more often. When I woke up this morning the computer was off. I used it for a bit and then went out for a few hours and came back to it being off again.
 
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Sluchbox said:
I found this in a Google image search, I am 95% sure this is the message I saw.

View attachment 1950677
Click to expand...

This happens whenever you start up a mac and don't enter the password... or at least, desktop macs (ie a mac mini). After a while, it shuts itself down again.

This part is completely normal behaviour, and not the problem you should be trying to diagnose.


At some point, your computer is rebooting and then coming up against this screen.

chown33 said:
If there's a failsafe timeout of some kind on the password dialog, then it's possible it would automatically shutdown if nothing was entered before the timeout expired.
Click to expand...

There is.
 
Sluchbox said:
Thank you so much for your extensive reply. I do not have a Battery option since it's a desktop, but I found the same settings in Energy Saver. Only "Enable Power Nap" was turned on, so I turned it off like you said.
Click to expand...

To confirm, you don't have "Start up automatically after a power failure" enabled on that same screen?

Sluchbox said:
When I turned my computer back on this morning it had the same Login screen, but it did not have the sentence at the bottom that I saw last night saying something along the lines of if I don’t know my password I could shut it down.
Click to expand...

It doesn't show up right away. It shows up after a couple of minutes without any input on the login screen.



Your next port of call to check should be back under energy saver preferences - go to "Schedule". What do you see?
Screenshot 2022-02-03 at 1.00.28 pm.png
 
nicho, under Energy Saver, under Power, everything is unchecked including "Start up automatically after a power failure". That was never checked, only "Enable Power Nap" was checked, but I unchecked it the other day.

Under Schedule, it is all off, like in your screenshot.
 
It's the mouse. I noticed it disconnecting while I was using the computer so I tried turning it off each time I left the computer and the computer never shut off since... until I left the mouse on once- then it turned off within hours.

I guess I just need to buy a new Magic Mouse?
 
"I guess I just need to buy a new Magic Mouse?"

Have you considered trying a different brand mouse?
Such as Logitech?
They're far better!
 
Sluchbox said:
It's the mouse. I noticed it disconnecting while I was using the computer so I tried turning it off each time I left the computer and the computer never shut off since... until I left the mouse on once- then it turned off within hours.
Click to expand...
I'm a bit puzzled by this. In post #12, you wrote:
This morning the computer was off again.
Click to expand...
This was after my earlier suggestion of disconnecting input devices overnight (post #4).

I took your statement in #12 as implying that you'd disconnected input devices overnight, and yet the computer was off again the next morning. So were the input devices disconnected overnight in that case, or did I misread post #12?
 
Fishrrman said:
"I guess I just need to buy a new Magic Mouse?"

Have you considered trying a different brand mouse?
Such as Logitech?
They're far better!
Click to expand...

I am so used to the Magic Mouse and the gestures. I ordered a new one from Amazon yesterday morning and received it by the evening (Same Day shipping for free is nice).

chown33 said:
I'm a bit puzzled by this. In post #12, you wrote:

This was after my earlier suggestion of disconnecting input devices overnight (post #4).

I took your statement in #12 as implying that you'd disconnected input devices overnight, and yet the computer was off again the next morning. So were the input devices disconnected overnight in that case, or did I misread post #12?
Click to expand...

I am not sure if I was mistaken or what.

Since then I found that the Mini never shut off if I turned the mouse off. But when I forgot and left it on, the Mini would turn off. I thought it might be the mouse because it disconnected a few times while using it, which never happened before. That's what made me look further into the mouse being the culprit.

Now that I got the new Magic Mouse it hasn't shut off and I think it's safe to say that it won't anymore. Thank you everyone for all of your help!
 
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