Windows – My computer wakes up from standby in the middle of the night and doesn’t want to remain standby

sleepstandbywake-on-lanwindows 10

Info: this question has been revived from ashes after several years, during which some hw/sw features changed, but still on very the same computer.

I recently upgraded to Windows 8. Now it is 10.

I found that a strange phenomenon is happening often during day or night hours (night hours being the most annoying).

I usually turn my computer "off" by putting it into standby mode so I can resume work fast when I need it. Tonight, it happened again: at 5:08 local time, without me or anyone else touching keyboard or mouse, the computer woke up from standby, waking me up too.

I got up and returned it to sleep by pressing the power button as usual. After less than 20 seconds, the computer woke up again, so I had to log in and shut down the system.

Motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX. BIOS doesn't show any "wake up on RTC alarm" option. I don't think it could be a WOL signal (wakeup on LAN) both because my home network is under NAT without DMZ to my computer, and also because I don't think any other device in my home might send a WOL packet to my desktop. Anyway, BIOS shows no option about that.

About a week ago it happened in the middle of the day, thrice. I put the computer to sleep and less than 20 seconds later it came back to life.

Is it a hardware or software failure? How may I fix that?

Additional information about hardware. Here are the most relevant USB devices connected to the computer:

  • Keyboard & trackball
  • Smartcard reader
  • Xbox 360 controller receiver (with controller turned off)
  • Webcam
  • 3D Vision emitter
  • Bluetooth pen
  • Android phone under charge
  • USB headset
  • Micro-SD reader

As suggested by @JoseManuelGomezAlvarez I did

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /waketimers
Il timer impostato da [SERVICE] \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\svchost.exe (SystemEventsBroker) scade alle 4:08:21 AM il 8/1/2017.
  Motivo: Verranno eseguire 'NT TASK\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\mcupdate_scheduled' attività pianificate che richiedono la riattivazione del computer.

Translated: Looks like Windows Media Center wants to wake the computer up to make some collection update perhaps.

A quick search on Google (worth an answer soon) brought me on a page with a clever title: Windows 7: mcupdate_scheduled wakes computer at night

So I found the potential culprit task, unchecked the option to wake the computer up and…………
I'll give you an update by tomorrow
enter image description here

Best Answer

As suggested by David, powercfg /waketimers showed the following output

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /waketimers El temporizador establecido por [SERVICE] \Device\HarddiskVolume4\Windows\System 32\svchost.exe (SystemEventsBroker) expira a las 23:35:31 el 08/01/2017. Motivo: Windows ejecutará la tarea programada 'NT TASK\Microsoft\Windows\Windo wsUpdate\AUScheduledInstall' que solicitó la reactivación del equipo.

And a Google search pointed to this Microsoft answer:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-performance/auscheduledinstall-disabled-but-re-eneables-itself/4332d01e-62cd-4b1e-8b21-a12e181e413d

Basically two solutions are provided:

Method 1:

Follow the steps to detect and disable the device using Command Prompt (admin):

Press Windows+X keys and select Run as administrator.

Type the following command and hit Enter:

Powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

You will get the name/names of the devices. To disable a specific device from waking the computer, run the following command:

Powercfg -devicedisablewake "devicename"

Note: Make sure that you replace the “devicename”placeholder with the name of the device that you want to disable. If this issue still occurs after you disable one device, disable the devices in this list one by one until you determine which device is causing the issue. If you want to re-enable a device to wake the computer, run the following command:

Powercfg -deviceenablewake "devicename" command.

If the issue still persists, proceed further to the next method.

Method 2:

Let's disable the option in Group Policy to avoid wake up patters of the computer through scheduled tasks:

Press Windows+R keys and select "gpedit.msc".

Navigate to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update.

Modify the "Enabling Windows Update Power Management to automatically wake up the system to install scheduled updates" policy.

Select Disabled from the list of options in this interface.

If you are unable to use the Group Policy Editor method or it's not available in the current version of Windows, use may use the Registry Editor method: Disclaimer: Please make sure that you backup the registry before proceeding with the steps mentioned below:

Press Windows+R keys and type "regedit". Hit Enter.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU (you may need to create the WindowsUpdate and AU keys) and create a DWORD value named AUPowerManagement. Set this value to 0.

Or create and import the following file AUPowerManagementDisable.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"AUPowerManagement"=dword:00000000
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