Dell Inspiron 530S PC keeps on turning on by itself?

Hi Kevin,

Pretty strange all right.

Have you tried leaving the network cable unplugged to see if the system stays off?

Thanks for the suggestion.  I will pull the LAN cable tonight and post back tomorrow.

Cheers,

-Kevin

Is it on a network? I had that problem with a PC on a home network, and other machines were constantly waking it up until I turned off a setting, the name of which escapes me.

In my BIOS, under power management setup, there is an option called remote wakeup. This option turns on the computer when you try to access the computer through the LAN (Enabled by default). The 530S BIOS appears to have the same option.

Disconnected the LAN, Keyboard and Mouse.

My BIOS Auto Power On is Disabled

The PC still Powered on by itself.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

-Kevin

Kevin, not to discourage you from getting this computer running correctly but I think you made a grave mistake changing around the BIOS?

This past year I updated the BIOS on one of my older computers and got the same symptoms where the computer would start on it's on and not keep the correct time, I was never able to recover from it. I changed the CMOS battery on the motherboard thinking it may have been bad and changed the jumpers on the motherboard around as recommended by the manufacturer, I think it's called flashing the BIOS or motherboard, nothing worked. Are you sure you have the correct BIOS version? The BIOS update version I had used was right from the manufacturers website and still did the computer in. Myself I wouldn't deal with BIOS again unless the computer was new and the manufacturer like Dell had a recommended and important BIOS update, and if no hardware had been changed in the computer before the update was recommended.

You could try starting the computer with no ram in it then shut down and repeat this process installing one ram stick at a time and shitting down. Or try swapping out ram if you have any spare ram. Sometimes ram gets corrupted. Worth a try, but I think you have a BIOS issue that's going to be hard to recover from.

Kevin,

When the system powered on while disconnected from the internet, did you get any errors?

Let me see if any of my cohorts has an idea.

Hi Kevin! Do you by any chance use the PC for watching TV? Have you tried to remove the batteries from the media controller when the PC is turned off to see if it is a faulty media controller?

Do you possibly have something scheduled in Windows 7 Task Scheduler control panel that's turning the PC on to, eg, look for updates, etc?  

PC is still powering on by it self.

See no errors when I log on.

Auto Updates turned off.

There are 33 Active Tasks but none are set to wake the computer.

Should I Disable or Delete these tasks?

Most of the tasks look like they are for the OS.

Thanks,

-Kevin

I'm pretty much out of ideas. Time for basic troubleshooting.

1. Unplug the hard drive. If the system still reboots, then you definitely have some sort of electrical problem. Might try resetting the CMOS.

2. If the system does not reboot, then it's something to do with the OS. Clean install time.

Osprey may be right that it's time for a clean install, but it shouldn't hurt to disable (don't delete) all those scheduled tasks. If that solves the problem, you can reactivate them one, or a few, at a time to see if you can identify the offender.

Disabled all scheduled tasks.

Disconnected the Hard Drive.  PC powers up saying No Boot Sector found press Ctrl Alt Del.

After unplugging the PC it powers back on when I reconnect the power.

Now the PC powers back on immediately.

Re-connected the Hard Drive and still got the No Boot Sector found error.

Removed battery and found that the battery has only had 2.6V

Purchased new battery and installed.

Reset the BIOS.

PC boots from Hard Drive but still powers back on immediately after Shut Down.

If I tell the PC to Hibernate, it powers back on immediately after going into Hibernation.

If I tell the PC to Sleep, it stays in Sleep.

I do not see the scheduled tasks that I disabled.

Do I need to re-enable these tasks?  How?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

-Kevin

With the new battery, try unplugging the hard drive again. In the BIOS, power restore should be set to off.