You may prefer to put your PC to sleep mode rather than shutting it down. However, when you check it later, your computer is automatically on again. This can happen now and then if your computer is trying to perform some important tasks like update or backup.
However, if it happens too frequently or for no reason, then you might have a problem at hand. This issue can be caused by things like scheduled tasks, false input from devices, and the Wake on LAN feature. However, these software problems are pretty common and easy to fix.
Troubleshoot with Event Viewer
First of all, you may diagnose this issue fromEvent Viewerto see what caused your PC to automatically wake up from sleep. So, here’s how you can do so.
Now, you will usually get three types of sources for why your PC woke up from sleep. It might state the power button, in which case, you manually turned on your PC from sleep.
It can also show a device that wakes up your PC or a scheduled task. Read more below to see how you can fix these.
Disable Devices From Waking Up Your PC
If you see a peripheral device like a mouse or controller show up in the Event Viewer, it might be a false input that caused your PC to automatically wake up. Some faulty input devices can cause these kinds of issues. So, you can simply unplug them to stop those devices from waking up your computer.
If it is inconvenient to unplug your peripheral device or if it is an internal device like a network adapter card, I’ll show you how you can disable them from waking up your PC.
Disable Wake Timers
Wake timers are basicallyscheduled tasksthat are allowed to wake up your PC from sleep to perform their configured action. These wake timers range from software updates to backups that get performed during your off hours.
Anyway, let’s first see all the wake timers that are currently active on your computer.
Now, you’re able to go to Task Scheduler to manage these wake timers so that your PC doesn’t wake up automatically during sleep mode.
If you don’t want to individually disable wake timers on Task Scheduler, you can directly disable theAllow Wake Timerssetting. This will stop all scheduled tasks from being able to wake your PC.
Disable Automatic Maintenance
Automatic maintenance is a scheduled task for your Windows computer that does a variety of things. It will perform software updates, security scanning, and system diagnostics. While this task doesn’t have permission to wake up your PC by default, you can assign this permission to it.
So, if this was enabled by accident or by some other software on your computer, you should check to make sure it is disabled.
Disable Wake on LAN
Wake on LAN is a feature on computers that allows them to automatically wake up from sleep mode from another device on the network. If you have enabled this feature, your computer might automatically wake up from sleep whenever a device joins your network. So, let’s see how you’re able to disable it.
