iMac is powering itself on - help

[Sinsinnati]

Well this has been my best computer system I have ever owned. I have had zero problems with it until now...

When my 24" iMac is off, the system will randomly power itself on. There is no specific time when this occurs but if I power it off at night, it will be powered on in the morning. The first time it happened I thought I didn't actual power it down but I have been following this issue for 2 weeks now and have decided to raise the question here.

Under "Energy Saver" I have unchecked "wake for ethernet network administrator access" out of suspicion that someone is powering my system from the internet.

Are there any thoughts to what might be doing this?

 

[yamabushi]

Are you certain that you are doing a full shut down and not just entering sleep mode? If it is sleeping it should have a pulsing white light. If it was just in sleep mode it could have come awake by even a slight movement of the mouse. I have seen them wake from the vibration when a truck drives by.

 

[Sinsinnati]

I am doing a full complete shutdown.

 

[maverick808]

Try unchecking "Restart automatically after a power failure" in the options too? And if you don't have a BT keyboard or mouse then uncheck "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" in the Bluetooth pref pane.

 

[Sinsinnati]

Thanks for the reply, I have a Logitech 530 Keyboard and mouse so I already have unchecked "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" and "Restart automatically after a power failure" is already unchecked.

Keep them coming, maybe there is something out there that I haven't thought of yet.

 

[Sinsinnati]

Anyone else have any suggestions?

 

[tristan]

Did you click the "schedule" in the energy saver settings? Maybe your mac is set to wake up at a certain time every day.

 

[Sinsinnati]

Thanks for the reply, The schedule feature under "energy saver" is not enabled on my computer.

 

[darkcurse]

Just pull the plug out? Now, if it does turn itself on after that then I will be impressed! And you'd better go to your nearest church/religious building and ask for an exorcism

 

[tristan]

Look at the system log for "wake" events. That might tell you something about the time and event that woke the computer.

Also, try unplugging the mouse and keyboard some night and see if it still wakes up. If so, one of these USB devices could be defective.

Otherwise, it may be a power problem that's fixed by a surge protector.

No answers, but maybe some troubleshooting direction here...

 

[Sinsinnati]

What is the path to the log I should be reviewing on the Mac?

 

[tristan]

Open the Console app (in Utilities under Applications), click on system.log in the logs list, and Look for an event like this:

Jul 4 21:07:04 atlas kernel[0]: USB caused wake event (EHCI)

(atlas is the name of my computer)

That might help you figure out when and why it woke up.