help me, o geeks

[egypturnash]

Okay, I'm sitting here at work. there are two machines on my desk - a Mac, and a Windows box. The Windows box came in here when I was working on that Boo Boo cartoon; the Windows version of Flash is marginally less unstable when working with huge files.

The Windows box has recently begun turning itself on mysteriously. I've poked around in its settings, but can't find anything like the 'wake for network admin access' or 'scheduled startup/shutdown' options that exist on Macs.

How the hell can I make this thing stop turning on? It's running Windows ME; I know that settings wander from version to version, Please do not tell me to install some other Windows; this is not something I want to hassle with. Oh, and it is hooked to the Internet; I've replaced Internet Security Hole Explorer with Mozilla, and it's never run any of the MS mail programs as far as I know, but it may well have picked up some nastiness somehow. It's got a version of Norton's anti-virus that came installed.

Comments

[nerfcoyote.livejournal.com]

There may be a Wake-on-LAN enabled in the system BIOS.
Or something like that...it's something in the setup mode but it varies by computer.

Here's some ideas...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...just to be paranoid, shut down Norton, and boot up House Call (http://housecall.antivirus.com/) for a once-over on the system, it may take a little fiddling with Java with Mozilla, but it works for me on Mozilla, Phoenix, and K-Meleon, so it's pretty browser-agnostic.

After that, give the machine a hard-reboot. If you want to really be paranoid, as sick at this sounds, close all the applications and hit the hard reset button, so long as you're not running anything, it won't hurt anything.

Then it's one of the following keys MOST of the time:



In order of chance, hopefully. :-) You'll be in the computer's BIOS unless it has a password-protection on it, which it might. If it does, um... either turn off the BIOS battery or yer' kinda stuck, and that requires opening the case and flipping a jumper that I'd need to get all nit-picky about the computer to find out where that jumper got hidden.

Once you're in the BIOS, um... hunt. :-) BIOS versions change like mad how they set things up.

Re: Here's some ideas...

[lapdragon.livejournal.com]

>> close all the applications and hit the hard reset button, so long as you're not running anything, it won't hurt anything.

Wrong-o. All versions of windows log specific data in their registry and to a portion of the hard drive set aside for system use. While hard-reseting doesn't always create an error, it can and should be avoided whenever possible. It's not that much harder to go to the start button to reset.

Simple

[lapdragon.livejournal.com]

While there may or may not be something in the bios that others have suggested, there is a simple way to keep it from turning on:

Unplug it.

If nobody's using it, just place a sign on it to tell its future user to plug it in, then unplug it after turning it off. This will solve the problem temporarily, until someone in an IS department can dink with its settings.

Re: Simple

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I thought of that blindingly simple solution, as well. I left it plugged in, though, with it set to not wake for network admin access - why on earth aren't these settings available somewhere more accessible than this character-mode screen that almost screams 'Choose Wrong and I Explode'?

There is nothing at all resembling an IS department at Spümcø. I'm one of, oh, maybe three people who knows more than how to turn them on.

Re: Simple

[lapdragon.livejournal.com]

Hire me, Hire me!

I need work and out of my house. I'm not a super-genious, but I know my way around and am well on my way to a Comp. Sci. degree. ^^