Standby Not Working Properly

My computer seems to go into standby normally (like it always has in the past), but for the last couple days now, immediately after the the CPU stops running, it starts right back up again. The monitor stays off, but something in the CPU just starts running again, and the CPU looks and sounds as though I had never put it on standby.

 

I just noticed something else -

When it goes into this "false standby" (don't know what else to call it), if I press a key, the monitor comes back on like it would in normal standby, but it will only respond for a limited time. I'm not sure for how long exactly, but I left the computer for a couple hours, and when I came back, I could not bring the computer out of this "false standby" state - although the CPU was still running like before, the computer would no longer respond; I had to press the power button to turn the computer off and back on.

 

RocSalt

Welcome. As Matt said in your other post, when a computer starts behaving badly, our thoughts go to malware or some other type of hacking. However, my first thought is to turn standby off in the contros panel. It's meant for laptops, to save batteries. That should solve the wake-up problem, if it doesn't go to sleep.

suggest you follow Matt's advice and get the anri-malware programs, a good antivirus, like free AVG, and a good firewall, like zonealarm, also free. See the links in my sig. below, under Security.

 

Well, I already have antivirus & a firewall.

So, just so I'm understanding you properly, under "Power Settings ", I should just have "Standby" and "Hibernate" set at "Never ", and just leave the computer running always?

 

Ok

The only question I have left - is "turning off hard drives" the same thing as if I used "turn off" from the Start menu to turn the computer off?

 

Nope. It simply puts them to sleep. Any activity on the PC will automatically wake them up.

 

Ok, thx everybody