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My MBP randomly turned on at 4:40 AM. What's going on?

DoNoHarm

DoNoHarm

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 8, 2008
1,138
46
Maine
Hello Everyone,

My Mac randomly turned on at 4:40 AM today. I have an alarm application that was set for 7 and I thought it was that, but when I went to the computer to turn it off, it was the page where it asks for your password. I had not turned off the computer, just put it to sleep the night prior. This has never happened before. Does anyone know what could be happening, or how I can determine what's happening?

Thanks!
 
A long shot, but check
System Preferences > Energy Saver > Options > Schedule​
to see if there's a scheduled "wake up call".
 
GGJstudios said:
A long shot, but check
System Preferences > Energy Saver > Options > Schedule​
to see if there's a scheduled "wake up call".
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked at that but there seems to be no wake up time selected.

Is it possible that someone on my network tried to get into my computer???
 
You don't have the EyeTV software installed by any chance do you? This calls in at about that time to update it's TV guide and was the cause of my computer waking every night. If not then it could still possibly be some application checking for updates, so worth a look.
 
My computer turns on randomly all the time. Sometimes when I sleep somehow my desk gets bumped, the mouse moves and the computer wakes; other times we're talking about something falling onto the the keyboard.
 
If a change in light hits the area where my laser mouse sits, it activates the mouse and wakes up the computer.

Like another poster said, it's probably some app doing a scheduled check of some sort.
 
Mac4Obama said:
Thanks for the suggestion. I looked at that but there seems to be no wake up time selected.

Is it possible that someone on my network tried to get into my computer???
Click to expand...

did you check your sharing sys pref pane? is anything enabled? if not then i don't think someone was on your computer. if they were you could check the logs right?
 
thanks for all the help everyone. I checked the system preferences -> sharing section and "file sharing" was enabled, but only the administrator had read/write privileges. others did have read privileges. I also have a cat and while extremely unlikely, it is possible that it stepped on the power button.

But even if the cat pressed the power button, I'm wondering what could have taken the computer from "sleeping" to "enter password". It's never woken up at 4:40 AM before nor has it ever woken up into the "enter password screen.
 
Mbp

My mbp SR mid 2007 has had this nasty habit since forever, it turns comes out of sleep at will and it has turned itself on sometimes. This is especially annoying when I have an external monitor attached because if it wakes up from sleep, even though the lid is closed, it won't go back to sleep. So I always disconnect everything when leaving my mac for hours unattended.

Just sharing to let you know it happens without the aid of cats or hackers
 
WAKING UP and TURNING ON are a bit different.

It seems a few people on this thread are a little confused about this point.

waking up from sleep is not turning your computer on. That is physically pushing the button or have a script set up.

waking up from sleep can be done by just about anything. if you have wireless keyboard and mouse you need to be careful of the low battery warning.

Apple used to have scripts that ran at 4am in the morning. some type of house cleaning or the like. do they still have that? but that only happened if your computer was on.

a good way to figure out the problem is the retrace all your DL steps over the past few weeks. Everything you have DLed in terms of apps needs to be checked. Do you have a lot of freeware/shareware installed? one of these might be doing it???

good luck!
 
Mac4Obama said:
Hello Everyone,

My Mac randomly turned on at 4:40 AM today. I have an alarm application that was set for 7 and I thought it was that, but when I went to the computer to turn it off, it was the page where it asks for your password. I had not turned off the computer, just put it to sleep the night prior. This has never happened before. Does anyone know what could be happening, or how I can determine what's happening?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I watched a movie the other day and this was happening...had something to do with the house being haunted...just something to think about.
 
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