I came downstairs during a bit of insomnia to find my computer had woken up and was working overtime and very hot.
Did a virus check but it found nothing.
I tended to put my computer on hibernate rather than switch off because it keeps things open. I have now taken to switching off the internet connection before hibernating.
Are there any computer experts that can tell me how come my computer has taken to clandestine nocturnal operations?
could be an anti virus scan kicking in, or automatic updates :-\
If your computer is waking up to do something then this may be listed under scheduled tasks (control panel -> scheduled tasks).
If you have any tasks listed, view their properites, under settings there should be a box `Wake the computer to run this task` if you have a task where this is selected then that is probably it.
I can accept a wake up if it is on Sleep but when on Hibernate it runs down the battery.
Also seems to have stopped by disconnected from net.
Digeroo
Your PC can wake from hibernation in several ways.
1 - Sheduled task http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=366133&forumid=1 (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=366133&forumid=1) often a task will get put there by AV or some update program
2 - Wake-on-lan - a "magic packet" sent by another device on the network
3 - Manual input
4 - BIOS settings
If it has stopped after disconnecting your PC from the net then it does point to wake on lan.
Have you any other PCs on the same network in your house?
It is possible to sends a "magic packet" to wake a PC over the internet net but your firewall must be set to spefically allow WOL. Are you behind a decent firewall/router or is your PC directly plugged into your ADSL line?
You can disable wake on lan in your bios if you know how to get into it - different makes have different ways of accessing the bios..
If you disable this you can at least eliminate one possible answer
click windows start button(bottom left) right click computer, select properties, select device manager from left hand panel, doubleclick network adapters, doublee click your ethernet card (mine looks like this...nvidia nforce 10/100/1000 mbps ethernet) click the advanced tab in the property section you should see a heading ,wake on lan, select this and in the value section on the left set it to disabled
Much easier misfit's way but not all network cards have this option under windows - my broadcom doesnt have it but my intel does!
The best way is to switch it off at night, it's good for the environment. The only time I had mine on all night was when I upgraded my OS and left it downloading and installing through the night.