Why does my iMac keep turning itself on?

Asked by Feta (930

) May 15th, 2013

This a new problem. It’s only been happening since Monday.

But I always turn off the monitor (just put it to sleep) when I’m not using it.

Now, I’ll come back into my room and find that it turned itself on to the login screen.

It does it in the middle of the night and it’s really bothersome.
It won’t go to sleep automatically either.

I checked the power saving settings and it’s all the same. There’s no time set for it to wake and it’s still supposed to go to sleep after 10 minutes.

And it wouldn’t be a time thing anyway…because it was on this morning and I turned it off again, then I turned around and started to walk away and it turned on.

How do I fix this?

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8 Answers

Csll 1–800 MY APPLE.

gailcalled (54647

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So tired, I’m tired of waiting, tired of waiting for you…....

janbb (63220

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@Feta – Do you have any external drives? I put all my media on an external drive. I found at a point my Mac would do the same thing – I think it has something to do with the drive “churning.” Now, as long as I eject the drives first, and then put it to sleep, it stays asleep, or @gailcalled‘s call – luckily, they’re pretty nice.

serenityNOW (3643

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Is it set to wake for network activity?

morphail (4970

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As @morphail asks, there is a check-box where you allow the computer to wake for network activity… I’m just not remembering where it is.

Do you have a cat that might be near the computer and jostling the mouse or stepping on the keyboard? Yes, I’ve had that happen.

hearkat (22922

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System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Wake for ******* Network Access

johnpowell (17881

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I agree that it’s either an external harddrive connected or wake for network access is turned on.

Silence04 (4718

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I do not have an answer for you, however, the discussions section on Apple’s site is quite good. Search the past issues section via search and I’m sure you’ll find a previous similar issue, if not you can always ask for help there…
Best of luck.

Bagardbilla (4580

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