Dell XPS8920 waking at ~3:30am

The MS update is scheduled for 8am-5pm.  And it does not come on when the XPS is shut down.  I do not like the deep sleep feature of the Dell.  It seems to not have the conventional sleep feature.  My XPS goes to sleep for a bit & then hibernates.

Thanx for the reply - Bob

Hi Homer1952,

Thanks for posting.

Have you tried turning off Microsoft Updates? or at least scheduling them for your 5am time?

Other than that, does completely shutting down the computer at night keep if from starting up again on it's own?

Open Windows Task Scheduler and click Task Scheduler Library. See if something is scheduled to run at 3:30 AM. If you don't see anything on the first list, open the Microsoft folder and other folders in the   Library to see if you can ID a scheduled task.

You can probably change the scheduled time or disable that particular task if you don't want it to run automatically.  Could be something like Adobe Reader looking for updates or an antiviral scan is set to run and/or update itself, etc.

Thanx for the latest reply, Ron.  I looked & saw 3 things: OneDriveStandalone, PCdoctorbackground & Intel security DAT reputation that have run during the early morning hours.  Some are scheduled for "one time".  I disabled them or retimed them.  I am running W10 64bit on an ASUS desktop I built a few years ago and have not had any of these issues.  I'll see how this goes.  I have a large monitor in the bedroom & when it fires up for no reason, it can wake me up if I am not Remming.  - Thanx - Bob

Hope that solves the problem...

Update - When I awoke this morning, I noticed the Dell was sleeping (slowly brightening & dimming of the white LED on the power button) after it was in hibernate mode (no LED at all) last nite.  So something is still taking it out of deep sleep/hibernate (which I thought I disabled in BIOS) and waking it to at least sleep mode.  Perhaps it woke completely & then went to sleep while I was sleeping.  Interrogating TS, showed no scheduled events taking place last nite/early morning.  OK, this is not the end of the world, but still I would like to get it to operate as I think it should.  I don't like a computer to be on for undetermined periods when I am not using it for a number of reasons.

I would look at powercfg and also look in the windows event logs.

for the event logs, click Start, and search for "View event logs", and wait for it to start.

On the left navigation panel, select "Windows Logs, System".

On the right navigation panel, select "Filter current log..."

On the  "Filter current log..." window, select Event Source : Power-troubleshooting and then click OK.

Look at the events in the middle panel and find the event at the time when the system woke up.

Then go back and look at the other logs like General and application to see what was running at that exact time.

It could be lots of things but this might help you narrow down what it might be.

for powercfg I would run these commands. I run these in a powershell admin window.

powercfg /lastwake

powercfg /availablesleepstates

powercfg /devicequery wake_armed

powercfg /waketimers

powercfg /requests

explanation of what the commands do are here:

docs.microsoft.com/.../powercfg-command-line-options

wake_armed and waketimers may give the answer if it is a device waking up the system.

/requests may give a hint if it is a program running that might wake up the system.

good luck

I looked in the Maintenance app & found that the "wake" permission box was unchecked.  So, many not the issue. Still, I changed the schedule time to 1pm.  Investigation continues.....

Thanx for that.  I ran most of those & see "Maintenance Activator" for a waketimer as the most likely culprit.  I try to investigate that further. -Thanx - Bob

What about Windows update? You might want to set that to PAUSE (delays installing updates for 7 days) to see if that's what's doing this.  And maybe also change Windows update's "active hours" .

What about Dell Update, McAfee or Norton, Adobe (Reader), looking for updates?

Long shot: Your power company is blinking the power at around that time which might cause your PC to wake up long enough to see what it's supposed to do when recovering from a "power failure".  Make sure that option is set to "Do nothing" in BIOS setup.

Thanx, but Windows update is set for 9am-5pm.  All the others are disabled according to Task Scheduler.  BIOS is set for do nothing.   Even today, there was no LED on the power switch, but sometime during the day I saw that it was doing the slow flash indicating it woke from hibernate for some reason.  Hmmm.  I turned off the Update Internet (Advanced tab) share today.  Maybe that?

Just the sleep pattern.  No error patterns.

Yes the PP is set to never.  That is where I started.  But as many know, the PP has very limited authority.  Someone like me, doesn't understand why MS provides options for sleep, etc. but does not give it authority to really carry it out.

Don't know what else to suggest, aside from powering the monitor off so it won't wake you if the PC decides to wake itself up...

OK, thanx.  The monitor powering on is a nuisance, but I am more worried that maybe more nefarious things could happen while the computer is awake & unattended.  I own 2 other W10 machines (Dell & ASUS) & they do not act this way.