Expert Help Request: PC Wakes - "Unknown" Reason - same time everyday

All

Yeah yeah - I know - another "sleep" question :)

But this one - REALLY has me jacked up as I have pretty much investigated every possible angle here and have still come up dry:

Context - Windows 10 Pro 22H2 installed on a brand-new audio workstation (Jan 26, 2024)

Intel LAN - Wake on LAN is enabled for use with my endpoint management software. Of the three Power Management options - the first two are checked and only the "Magic packet" item is unchecked.

Wake Schedule - Endpoint software runs a script to "wake this PC every day at exactly 5:10am (which it does perfectly)

Sleep Schedule - Endpoint software runs a script to "sleep" this PC every day ay exactly 10:30pm (which it does perfectly)

Anomaly: At exactly 10:43pm - for at least the last week (but maybe longer) - the PC wakes and the wake source = "Unknown"

That is where I am at. What I have done so far - from most obvious to the very obscure:

1. Standard Power Settings adjustments (to ensure no wake timers or any other crap)
2. Dropping ALL sleep timers
3. Killing all possible device options (mouse, keyboards) that have a checkbox (or anything related to) "Allow this device to wake the PC etc etc"
4. powercfg /last wake
5. powercfg /wake timers
6. powercfg /sleepstudy (cool report that is so close but yet so far)
7. Deep Scheduled Task analysis with no obvious outliers (but this still my best guess)
8. Event Log analysis - daily/hourly exam with no clues
9. Several in-depth PowerShell scripts that try to pinpoint what task or what "unknown" force is occurring at exactly 10:43pm (Nothing found so far)

If this is NOT a mysterious scheduled task firing at 10:43pm - it can only be one other thing - a WOL request from my endpoint management system (Endpoint Central) which makes no sense at all as 10 other PC are part of its Wake/Sleep schedule and no others are waking at this oddball time. And ALL if them have the identical LAN interface power management options checked.

Or it is truly "Unknown" At my wits end here folks - is there anything else I can examine?

Sonic

Berton said:

I don't know much about the software you mentioned and probably no help but I also didn't see anything mentioned about the BIOS settings for that particular computers and comparing its settings against one or more of the other machines. The Operating System reads the BIOS during boot-up to know what resources it has to work with then loads drivers accordingly.

Thanks for chiming in!

While I do agree that specifics must be set in the BIOS to establish enable correct "sleep" states/settings (S3/S4 etc) and so on - nothing in the BIOS would cause an event to fire at 10:43pm - if the machine is sleeping.

This machine has the identical BIOS settings on any other here (all 2020-24 ASUS machines whose BIOS are largely identical)

And S3 sleep - which is standard on all machines - is simply super low power mode with Windows already loaded. The BIOS is really not part of this wake cycle.

Cheers

S

I can't recall the details, but a friend had a machine that was being automatically started up in a ghostly fashion by a BIOS setting. I'm with Berton on this one...

Hi SonicMojo,

Just taking a stab, but have you checked Windows Updates?

Kind regards,

tecknot

All

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

Managed to solve this - it appears to have been a very obscure setting coming from my endpoint solution (ManageEngine Endpoint Central).

Someway/somehow - one of the components (their "desktop" Agent) that monitors a machine - was trying to do a "reinstall" of this specific agent on just this specific machine - which was already installed just fine.

As soon as I killed this thing - and checked my logs on this machine from last night - all quiet at 10:43pm. The PC went to sleep on time and woke on time - with no shenanigans in between.

Looks like we are good to go.

Cheers!

S