PC Problem

[jazz]

I know this has nothing to do with model railways but this problem is driving me nuts.

 

Is there any computer technos out there that can explain to me why my PC has suddenly decided to randomly self startup when in standyby mode. It does not connect to the web as I have no auto starts selected, as I like to work offline a lot.

 

I always close all programes and do not take 'shortcuts' to go to standby.

 

I have tried everything I know, like deselecting all auto starts. I use Windows XP Home Edition.

 

Help anyone, PLEASE. Regards Ken.

[Jonboy]

Do you use wired or wirelss keyboards? if the latter could there be vibrations of some sort jogging the mouse or something nearby spoofing the signal (have heard of both before).

[Rob Pulham]

I know this has nothing to do with model railways but this problem is driving me nuts.

 

Is there any computer technos out there that can explain to me why my PC has suddenly decided to randomly self startup when in standyby mode. It does not connect to the web as I have no auto starts selected, as I like to work offline a lot.

 

I always close all programes and do not take 'shortcuts' to go to standby.

 

I have tried everything I know, like deselecting all auto starts. I use Windows XP Home Edition.

 

Help anyone, PLEASE. Regards Ken.

You could also have it set to come out of standby on a key press? Alternately although you say PC generically is it a laptop? - they play by a different set of rules related to saving energy while on batteries.

[k9-70]

I know this has nothing to do with model railways but this problem is driving me nuts.

 

Is there any computer technos out there that can explain to me why my PC has suddenly decided to randomly self startup when in standyby mode. It does not connect to the web as I have no auto starts selected, as I like to work offline a lot.

 

I always close all programes and do not take 'shortcuts' to go to standby.

 

I have tried everything I know, like deselecting all auto starts. I use Windows XP Home Edition.

 

Help anyone, PLEASE. Regards Ken.

 

Possible causes could be a cookie set to turn on the computer at a preset time without your knowledge.

Could also be your web server updating/accessing your computer.

Might also be a virus turning your computer on and connecting to a remote server.

 

Why leave your computer in stand-by mode when your not using it?

After you've finished using it, shut it down and switch it off at the power supply or mains switch.

That way you can be sure that all is safe.

 

It happened to me a few times, but I solved it by turning it off at the power supply.

It's not funny waking up in the dead of night and hearing your computer fans/hard drive whirling away, after you thought it was safe to leave it in stand-by mode.

 

K9-70

[Burkitt]

My laptop does this too. I'm fairly sure it's something to do with the computer trying to download and install updates, but I haven't yet worked out how to prevent it from happening.

 

Paul

[jazz]

Thanks for the replies guys. It is a desktop and wired. I have been through the power manage tool and all but the keyboard is set to not allowing the devices to come out of standby.

 

I have run the PC through all the security checks for malicious files and viruses and all showed clear.

 

There is not set time it turnes itself on. It can go 24 hours or more and it's OK then it can turn on three times in 24hrs at competely different time, neve during the night though.

 

I have taken to leaving in standby for tweo reasons. I am on and off the PC many times a day. Also when I do a complete shut down it takes uo to 20 minutes to startup.

[28ten]

If it taking 20 minutes to start up you have a problem somewhere...

There is a setting for WOL ( wake on LAN ) which enables the computer to be started by a connection which might be worth trying. I'm afraid I can't be more specific as it is years since I have tackled this sort problem.

[10000]

20 mins startup time suggests to me a problem. I can believe 4 -5 mins startup time on older PC's with XP, SP3 and all patches.

I reinstalled my last PC and installed all MS's downloads, the PC took 3 min 45 sec to start up with XP ,SP3 and all patches so I reinstalled it and only took it to SP2, startup time was then less than a minute.

 

Another thing I disliked about Windows, which could be related to your problem, is that it frequently wants to access the internet without any action from you. I used a firewall that allowed you to see what software on your PC was trying to access the internet and had it set to block many of these . Many software programs want to access the internet without your knowledge but Windows is especially bad for this.

 

 

As someone else suggested WOL may be turned on for your network card. This can usually be turned off in the Bios settings for the PC.

[meple]

Also when I do a complete shut down it takes uo to 20 minutes to startup.

 

 

You have a problem here. I shouldn't take more than 2 mins.

 

Suggest you visit: http://onecare.live.com/site/en-gb/default.htm and do a complete scan. This may take you all day but I think you will find it worth it in the end.

[beast66606]

Try

 

Start->Run->Msconfig

 

This will show whats started by Windows and you can disable things - CAREFULLY.

 

Check for things like 2 anti virus products or 2 firewalls, having two "security" type programs installed can lead to such problems as they tussle for pole position.

[m davies]

Ken, 20 mins start up is much too long, a normal set up should be in the order of 2-3mins, a very clean and lean set up as quick as 30 seconds, mine is about 20 seconds, with a further 15 seconds once logged in for anti virus and fire walls to finish booting and come on line.

 

Press CTRL + ALT + DEL keys then select the processes tab and see how many are running, between 30-40 is good, higher and you may have a lot of processes running you don't actually need. Unless you use them, turn off things like MS Messenger and Skype, chat programs, there running all the time in the back ground and eat resources and CPU clock time, there are many other services you can turn off as well. A good program to get is CCleaner, its free or used to be, haven't checked recently, it has a tab to show exactly what programs are being called for at boot up, many are not needed and you have the option to stop or delete them, if in doubt leave alone but a simple google of the process will reveal if its a critical system required program or not, CCleaner tends not to show critical boot up programs anyway. The program also has the option to clean up your hard drive by removing all the junk and temporary files, it'll also clean your registry for you, there are several programs that can do this but I've found CCleaner the most stable, it might not deep clean like others but in over three years it has never damaged the registry so I consider it almost idiot proof in that respect.

 

You may want to do a defrag on your hard drive too that will cause all sorts of other problems, might not solve your auto boot problems. Does your keyboard have a wake up button ?, check that, sometimes they get sticky and may turn on a PC in stand by mode, or if its a wireless keyboard some external trigger might be setting it off.

 

Good PC health is a routine that one needs to exercise regularly, these files and such other nonsense tend to creep up on you and as its a gradual process you tend not to notice until one day it all seems a bit flakey, I run Win XP with SP3 installed.

 

Hope that helps

 

Michael

[jazz]

Right. Micheal, I have 77 proceeses showing. As to which to delete, I do not know that deleting the wrong things are not good.

 

As for the other suggestions, I'm too scared to start, except the simple stuff like defrag.

 

I do have two firewalls actually , I think, Norton and Windows. I will investigate how I can turn off Windows firewall.

 

I will do what I feel comfortable with, as my sister in law is a bit more savy with PC's and she now has something to work with, with all the above suggestions.

 

Here we go with what I can do. Thanks guys.

[m davies]

Right. Micheal, I have 77 proceeses showing. As to which to delete, I do not know that deleting the wrong things are not good.

 

As for the other suggestions, I'm too scared to start, except the simple stuff like defrag.

 

I do have two firewalls actually , I think, Norton and Windows. I will investigate how I can turn off Windows firewall.

 

I will do what I feel comfortable with, as my sister in law is a bit more savy with PC's and she now has something to work with, with all the above suggestions.

 

Here we go with what I can do. Thanks guys.

 

Ken, 77 processes ?, wow thats a healthy bundle of processes , I'd say about 20 maybe 30 you don't really need, but if your not comfortable messing with them then don't, most of those wont be critical OS processes anyway, just junk collected along the way. A couple of niggly ones are Real player and Quick time, these just keep popping up and self install and run, you can use CCleaner or the tip above with Start/Run/MSconfig and turn them both off.

 

Two firewalls are not good, Norton should have turned the other one off, some purchasable firewalls will auto turn off the default windows one, some wont, personally I use AVG free as virus protection and Zone Alarm as a free firewall, both have stopped everything for 5 years or more, one other good anti hacker firewall thing is a router in line with your incoming cable, that has a different IP to your PC and stops 90% of most viruses, well worth the money if only used as protection.

 

To turn off Windows firewall, click start, then settings, then control panel, look for the security center icon or text, open that and then click the firewall tab, you should be presented with the option to tick to turn off, put a bullet point in Off and click ok and thats it done.

 

Going back to your services, as I recall Norton alone has a lot of services running, especially if its the full package with firewall and mail scanner, that could account for many of your services, I've never had much luck with Norton, its an insidious program, once installed it can never be fully removed except for a hard drive format and total OS reinstall, but if your just a casual PC user then I think its good as it covers nearly everything people want, its just not very PC CPU friendly .

 

One program I can fully recommend is O&O defrag, its a professional package so does cost to buy, but if used in the correct manner will transform any PC for speed of use and boot/shut down times, theres a guy in the Flight sim community (where I've been working for many years) who is a god with PC health, mostly related to getting the latest MS flight sims to run smoothly, his set up for O&O is blisteringly good, if anyones interested in going down that road, let me know and I'll post links to his notes, it changed my wifes PC from 5 min start to just over 1 min, and mine from 2 min's to 30 seconds, all from just defragging and some very basic systems set ups and services adjustments. I've used many other so called PC tweaks over the years, many much more in depth but as it turns out, useless.

 

Hope that helps and good luck.

 

Best

 

Michael

[Jinty3f]

I used to have a similar problem, and START - RUN - MSCONFIG - STARTUP showed large numbers of things happening. Like you, I was unsure what to safely disable, but found this site

 

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/

 

I systematically checked each entry in my startup against the alphabetical list on this site, and found I could safely uncheck over half the stuff that was running at startup. It took me a morning, but I can now boot up in about 2 minutes. The site is free to use although you can register as well if you want to.

 

JD

[10000]

Another piece of useful software is this

 

Ad aware

 

good for finding malware which is often not spotted by antivirus software.

 

As suggested use the process tab to find what is running then type the name into google. Usually something is turned as to what it is

 

i.e. smss.exe -

smss.exe is a process which is a part of the Microsoft Windows Operating System. It is called the Session Manager Subsystem and is responsible for handling ...

 

Anything that comes up that you are not sure about ask before removing.

 

Only run 1 firewall and antivirus package at a time.

[bertiedog]

I think others have covered most options, but the start up period is really massive, and needs investigation. Not Knocking Norton, but I have seen this before on PC with it, and I only use Zone alarm and AVG for this reason. Both AVG and Norton will turn off the Windows firewall anyway, they do it automatically.

 

A small useful item is Ccleaner, free, and well known, which clears temps etc, but also includes a registry cleaner , and their own faster de-frag, and it can control start -up.

 

I suspect that the unwelcome warm ups are due to updating checks by software, often timed by de-fault to US time zones, and it needs a trawl through properties on running programs to find and de-set them, or move the timing to suit you.

 

But first is the start-up, that's a disaster area at the moment, should be 4 minutes max. (assuming full spec ram memory etc., low ram will slow start-up dramatically, as the hard drive is used more.)

 

Stephen.

[m davies]

One other factor is your PC hardware, open the cover and see if the CPU cooling fan is nice and clean and make sure all your vents are clean, if not unplug the PC and gives it a good brush with a 1 or 2" soft paint brush, take it outside and give it a good puff and blow through. A good quick way to see if your PC hardware is ok is to look at your CPU temperature, grap the excellent free program called RealTemp, run that, your chip temp should be in the 40's or mid 50's DegC, when its running real hard, higher than that and things start to go slow, I forgot to clean mine once and the temps got to high 60s and boot times and general processing were quite slow, I was pleased to see a nice gain with all the fluff cleaned out and fna blades cleaned.

 

Best

 

Michael

[m davies]

Another piece of useful software is this

 

Ad aware

 

good for finding malware which is often not spotted by antivirus software.

 

As suggested use the process tab to find what is running then type the name into google. Usually something is turned as to what it is

 

i.e. smss.exe -

smss.exe is a process which is a part of the Microsoft Windows Operating System. It is called the Session Manager Subsystem and is responsible for handling ...

 

Anything that comes up that you are not sure about ask before removing.

 

Only run 1 firewall and antivirus package at a time.

 

 

Another couple of good free progtams are Spybot Search & Destroy and Spyware Blaster, both small minimal programs to protect you from internet junk.

 

Best

 

Michael

[jazz]

Good grief, so much stuff to try. wow. I have heard that Norton does slow things up at startup (I have the pay version) I chose it because of all the viruses I used to get before purchasing and have just stuck with it. I have also been told AOL is a slow starter, again it was the first I used and have stuck with it. Mainly because of all the online banking, bills etc etc I didn't know if that would be affected by changing from AOL. (I guess the email address would have to change?)

 

I looked at MS Firewall and it was showing ON so I turned that off. (It has actually speeded startup to 12 minutes from turning on to on line. So there are other things to look at like the temperature (It's 4 years old, alltough the back of the tower is kept dust free on the exterior,)

 

I am interested in looking at O & O too.

 

I can see this will take a bit of time to check it all out.

 

Oh and today there was no self start, so things may be getting better.

[m davies]

Ken,

 

O&O Defrag is a trial before you buy, you get one month free to see how you get on, O&O on its own is good, but with the tweaks the flight sim gurus advocates then its really good, some are registry tweaks and more in depth tweaking but its a all explained in well detailed steps, however I think just O&O on its own would help you, certainly for one month for free. I've copied the guys thread at source so can easily copy and paste into a word document if required, I printed it out and the whole process took a good days work but was worth every step of the process.

 

Cleanliness, externally doesn't really matter, its internally that really counts, especially around the chip and its fan.

 

AOL, yes I've heard it can be a pain, probably due to all the comm lines and services its opening, if you don't use them and you strike me as a person not prone to such things LOL, then you only really need a simple browser set up, I presume AOL is also a start up process ?, could be tricky sliming it down then, probably better to try everything else first before struggling with Norton or AOL, you may find enough gain elsewhere to not bother with messing with either to be honest.

 

A really good tip is cleaning out temporary files, especially internet ones, you can set up IExplorer to delete them automatically when it closes down and you can also reduce the size of the cache it uses when it is running, all of these help bit by bit to speed things up.

 

I seriously suggest getting CCleaner and installing it, just for the cleaning functions it does, you can then look at the start up tab and see whats ruining, it only shows extra programs, just checked, theres no critical OS services in there, you have the choice to click them on or off, for example I have Real scheduler turned off, it only effects Real Player, if I suddenly found that when using Real Player something wasn't working, I just go back to CCleaner and turn it back on, reboot and see if that solved it. Failing that you don't need to do anything except look, it will give you a very good indication of what is starting and if you have room for cutting back.

 

You'll probably find that you can reduce your start time by 75% very quickly and easily, the other 25% will take much longer and a little more in depth adjustments, above all, if in doubt, ask or google the service and see what everyone else says.

 

Best

 

Michael

[bennyboy]

First of all I'd uninstall Norton and install a free virus canner such as AVG or Avast as in my experience Norton slows down and causes more problems for computers than any virus ever will!

[10000]

There are a lot of things that can slow down your PC and when you add them all together real problems can occur.

 

A few more thoughts from me

 

1) AOL - when I was working in I.T. I got more personnel requests for help due to AOL. It has a nasty habit of installing loads of junk you don't need, taking over some aspects of software ( especially the web browser) controlling what you do and how you do it. Upgrades frequently broke other things. My advice was always get rid of it.

 

2) Don't install software, just to have a look, then uninstall it. Only install if your really intend to use it. The Remove/Uninstall options usually leave loads of settings in the registry, and the bigger the registry gets the more impact on start up time.

 

3) Try to avoid installing lots of fonts, these also increase start up time.

 

4) Be sure to download Ad aware and/or the other recommended spyware checking programs. Run them and do not be surprised if they find a lot of stuff that needs to be removed. A friends 9 month old PC running Nortons started to run poorly with loads of popups. I installed and ran Ad Aware and it found over 100 pieces of software that had been installed, without their knowledge, from websites they visited. Amongst them were 2 different key loggers.

 

 

Just keeping plugging away at it, keep us up to date on what you do, then maybe we can suggest a few more things

[28ten]

Ken

before you do anything you might want to get an external drive and make a mirror copy of your current setup, that way if you do delete something and the system fails you can quickly restore your old setup with all files etc intact

[m davies]

Thats the clever bit these days, most hackers know anti virus programs will pick up their wares so they try many other underhand ways to get to you, as you say hidden ad ware in sites you visit is one way, part payload viruses is another where by an innocent file is sent to you that virus programs do not detect, it then phones home and collects the real virus, a good firewall will detect the out going call and stop it, failing that the router will stop the incoming as it'll go to that IP and not your PC's.

 

The more buggy and addon happy the program you use the easier it is for hackers to exploit, AOL being one, IExplorer is another though no where near as bad, the best browser seems to be Firefox as it uses little of MS coding and really is a stand alone browser.

 

If you use IExplorer then steer clear of google search or addon bars, or google chrome I think it might be called these days, that watches all that you do, runs in the back ground, all in the name of making surfing better and faster, whilst its debatable if it actually makes it faster it does slow the PC down as it runs all the time your on the net and logs all the places you visit, and that takes CPU cycles to store, read and cross check.

 

I'm sure that there are many people who have no issues with such things, personally I find them next to useless and almost always intrusive at best, the old adage, you don't get something for nothing rings true here, there giving you something for nothing, trust me there getting something back and usually something you don't want to give, might not be bank details but it'll certainly be surfing habits and a cataloger of sites you visit so they can specifically target you with adds etc based on your browsing habits.

 

Ohh, get a good pop up blocker, adjust your browser (Tools / Internet Options / Advanced / multi media settings about 2/3rds down) so it does not play sounds from sites or pages you visit and also turn off animations played on sites, all those emoticons etc, all have to be down loaded when you visit, all play whilst your on that page and all get stored in temp files when you leave.

 

I'd also go with getting rid of Norton, whilst you will delete it and many of its services will not run any more, the un-install will leave lots of traces on your hard drive, I think its one of the hardest pieces of software to totally remove from a PC, whilst the remaining bits are not malignant they are still there and still taking up space.

 

AOL, you can still remove this and still use your email and such stuff, you just need to go on line to collect it, I use NTL but can just go to their site and collect my mail by using there remote access panel, I got rid of the NTL package years ago, you don't need your servers software to access everything, most can be got on line from their web pages etc.

 

You could fill books on how to speed up and clean up PC,s but the few pointers above will certainly get you on your way for starters.

 

Best

 

Michael

[jazz]

Update so far. I've spent a lot of time today deleting hundreds of photos. I've defraged. checked and reset power options. Done a disk cleanup. Set startup progs to 0 ( It was set at 6). Also uninstalled unused programmes.

 

Polished the screen and now it's down to 8 mins from a complete close to AOL opening page. A couple of more minutes to actually signing in and getting online.

 

So that's a big improvement. Using the PC when online it runs quite well. Pages open quite quickly, sometimes in a few seconds.

 

I looked at the Adware etc and I'm dubious about signing for free trail offers to download the actual programme. (I'm a cautious guy and don't trust these things.)

 

As I would like to remove a lot of the processes I seem to rember from long ago I came safely remove anything that has ken on it but nothing that ends in exe. on the processes list. Is this correct?

 

Giving it a rest for now. To be continued. BTW AOL does a spyware check everytime I open up. Norton ocasionally informs me 'someone tried to atack my PC and was blocked'. I also NEVER get popups or spam mail all are blocked.