I've just been putting it to sleep rather than turning it off. Something I never did with XP, but Win7 seems pretty stable without restarting regularly.
Time to Google. Everyone keeps suggesting a scheduled task (why wouldn't people know they set up a scheduled task), or BIOS timer (again, why...). After a bunch of different searches, I finally see a suggestion that Media Centre may start up a PC for TV guide updates, and you could check this in the Event Viewer.
Couldn't see why it would do that, as during setup, Media Centre told me it couldn't get a TV Guide in my area. But the event viewer confirmed it. Somewhere about 8:30 or 9am each day, the System log showed the computer starting up, and the Media Centre log showed it looking for updates.
OK. Open Media Centre, go to settings, and turn off everything which might download updates.
Next evening, check the logs to see my PC didn't start itself up that morning. Hooray! Problem solved...
Woke up next morning at 4am to see a glow coming from the study. My computer was on!!!! Damn!
So today I looked at the logs again.
The system has resumed from sleep.
Sleep Time: 2010-03-26T12:27:04.657202500Z
Wake Time: 2010-03-26T17:04:08.967941900Z
Wake Source: Timer - Windows will execute '\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\mcupdate_scheduled' scheduled task that requested waking the computer.
Media #%%@# Centre!
The Media Centre logs tell the story. Looks like when I started it up to change settings, it appears to have taken the opportunity to load updates, and decided it didn't actually need to start up it's normal time yesterday, thus making me think I'd turned it off. No such luck.
Check settings again:
Just in case, scheduled optimisation disabled.So why is it still starting up my machine?
It has to be possible to stop automatic wakeup from sleep, so I check the Power Settings:
- Power Settings\Advanced Settings\Sleep\Allow Wake Timers
Looks likely, so I set that to disabled.
It seems to have done the job, but it now means I can't schedule Media player to turn on and record a TV show. There has to be a better way.
Mircosoft! Wake up and listen. We don't want our machines doing unexpected things like waking up from Sleep to download crap we never wanted, especially when it uses non-standard means to do so! (Why doesn't it just set a scheduled task, then we'd know how to stop it.) Media Centre never told me it would do that. There doesn't seem to be a settig to stop it. Do you expect your TV or car to turn itself on in the middle of the night? (Gee, I'm sure I filled up the tank yesterday??) At least make it a visible setting for the Media Centre.
If anyone knows how to fix this properly, please leave a comment.
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