Unwanted behavior: Dell Precision 7760 turns itself on one day per month at specific time

[Light]

I have a Dell Precision 7760 that is a great machine, but it is driving me crazy with one unwanted behavior that I still cannot solve:

 

At 8:24:11 am on each 18th day of the month, it powers itself on from a shutdown state.

 

So if your computer is turned off the night before and you come into the office at 9:00 am, you find your precision turned on on each 18th day of the month, creating a bit of alarm that something is amiss. I don't like it.

 

It happens if the precision is connected to the Dell ac adapter. It does not happen if it's disconnected from the Dell AC adapter.

 

It also happens if all hard drives / ssds are physically removed and the network cable and all usb cables are detached. With the AC adapter as the only thing attached to the Precision 7760, it still does this behavior.

 

The bios seems to have no option to turn on on one specific day of the month, so I cannot see how to disable this. No other auto power on is enabled in bios that I can see. Several bios updates when new versions come out have not solved this. Manually changing the system time in the dell bios can recreate this behavior, so if you set the system time to ~8:22 am (any time before 8:24:11) and the date to the 18th (of any month) and shut the system down, it will power itself on at 8:24:11.

 

@Dell-Mano_G any idea what in the design of the Precision 7760 would cause this behavior? It is driving me crazy not being able to disable it. Thanks!!

Anyone else have any idea what could cause this?

[Aaron44126]

Someone else had this and I believe ended up solving it.  Let me see if I can find the posts...

[Light]

Thanks! I had this topic on the old forum and tried several things, but never was able to solve it. A couple other people on the dell forum reported this problem, but I haven't yet found any solution to it. Would love to hear if anyone else solved it.

I try to unplug the ac adapter each month on the 18th, but if I forget, it still makes me panic somehow if I find my computer already running in the morning.

 

[Aaron44126]

Found it -- https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-7560-7760-owners-thread.836381/page-131.html

Are you NBR user "summersun"?  If not, the issue is too specific to be a coincidence.

(Looks like it was not solved after all...)

 

Have you engaged Dell ProSupport?  They might be able to bump it up to the engineering team and get an answer.  (Or you might get sent on a wild goose chase.)

[Light]

Yes, that was me on the old NBR forum, and I've been thinking about it since then but have not solved it.

Interestingly a family member bought an inspiron, the same month last year, and it turns itself on around 3am one day per month. It's really odd, because not that many people report this behavior, but a few do.

 

I thought maybe something in our network was somehow signaling the dell(s) to power on even though that bios option was disabled (wake on lan, etc. disabled), but it happens even if the network is disconnected from the machine. On my precision, wireless and bluetooth are disabled too, so it has no network access when this occurs.
I thought maybe something in the windows 10 install was causing it, but it happens even with all drives physically removed from the precision.

 

It's a very odd behavior since there is not a setting for powering on on one day of the month that I can see. 

 

Someone on the dell forum thought it might happen on their machine on the day of the month and time the machine was first powered on or when the bios was first flashed. It is so strange...

 

[alittleteapot]

I believe I have something to contribute on this mystery.  You have to restart your PC, get yourself into BIOS, and then in the upper-right, press the blue "View All" button, then look under "System" - there is a Scheduled Power On setting in there.  It won't be visible otherwise - apparently "View All" gives a lot of hidden BIOS options that we would otherwise never know exists.  Looking at that, it allows your PC to schedule a startup at a specific day and time.  I googled around a bit and got lucky 🙂

[Light]

Thanks very much -- however, in the bios, I've clicked "View All" on the top right, and then System Management -> Auto On Time and am not seeing an option that could produce the one day per month auto-on.

 

Is this where you are seeing it?

 

Or is there another Scheduled Power On setting that I am not seeing?

 

The View All -> System Management -> Auto On Time is set to disabled on mine.
It has options [x] Disabled   [ ] Every Day [ ] Weekdays [ ] Select Days
Under that has checkboxes for [x] Sunday [ ] Monday [ ] Tuesday [ ] Wednesday [ ] Thursday [ ] Friday [ ]Saturday.

 

If I'm looking at the right place in bios, if it were somehow stuck to enabled even though it's showing disabled,  I can't see how that would allow an auto on to be set for the 18th day of every month (only) which is the behavior mine is doing. (unless there is some way to revel a "day" selection other than every sunday/monday/tuesday/wednesday/thursday/friday/saturday since mine only turns on one day per month.

[alittleteapot]

I would actually try turning this setting on right now, get it to trigger at least once, and then disable it again, just to see if this can somehow "clear" some invisible setting / bad UEFI data that is causing this condition.  If that doesn't work, then you actually have a pretty solid case to make for a motherboard replacement.

[Light]

Good idea. Will give that a try now. Setting Auto On to "Select Days", checking Sunday, Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Saturday, and selecting 3:09 pm.  Will let it auto-on at the 3:09 pm time and see if that clears something.

 

Then I'll adjust the time in bios to 8:23 am on the 18th, and

1.) see if setting a 3:09 pm auto-on overwrites whatever bios setting is incorrectly in there for 8:24:11 on the 18th
2.) see if it still powers on at 8:24:11 even with the 3:09 pm enabled.

[Light]

Enabled auto-on at 3:09 pm
Apply Changes
Exit

 

(Booted windows, Shut Down)

Waited, and machine turned on at 3:09 pm

 

Shut Down
Power Button, F2 entered Bios

Changed Bios time to 8:20 am

Apply Changes
Exit

 

Waited, and machine incorrectly still powered itself on at 8:24:11 on the 18th
(Auto Time is still Enabled for 3:09 PM, Selected, and all days of the week Sunday, Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Saturday seleected)

[Light]

Repeating the above experiment but changing it from Select Days (Sun,Mon,Tues,Wed,Thur,Fri,Sat) to Every Day at 3:09 pm. Seeing if the machine still comes on at 8:24:11 on the 18th by changing the time in bios.

[Light]

Still powered on at 8:24:11 am on the 18th system time.
 

Repeated one more time by entering bios again, setting auto-on back to disabled, Apply, Exit, Boot, Shut down, power button light off... at 8:24:11 on the 18th bios time, system still powered itself on.

[Light]

Unless I can think of something else to try, I'm thinking of ordering a 7770. 

 

Then I'll send in the 7760 in for service and get a motherboard swap if necessary. I have a 5 year pro support warranty but it's probably easier to send it in due to my difficult location. This little glitch is so minor, but so annoying that it is driving me crazy.

 

[jaybee83]

2 hours ago, Light said:

Unless I can think of something else to try, I'm thinking of ordering a 7770. 

 

Then I'll send in the 7760 in for service and get a motherboard swap if necessary. I have a 5 year pro support warranty but it's probably easier to send it in due to my difficult location. This little glitch is so minor, but so annoying that it is driving me crazy.

 

in such instances an extended warranty is a life saver 🙂 

[alittleteapot]

This is completely bonkers.  The only last ditch thing I could think of is to update your Intel ME firmware, in fact any firmware you can find on your laptop, because something in there just isn't working correctly.  But I think your plan is really the best.  If the warranty support call gets a little wonky..."Your problem only occurs once a month?  Did you reinstall windows?" , Email them this whole thread as support, and let them sort through the details 🙂

[Light]

Un.... believable!

 

So in September I decided to buy a new Precision so I could send this one into dell to be serviced. I figured it would require a motherboard swap or something drastic since firmware updates and other attempts had not solved it for 10 months of trying.

 

Right after I decided to buy a new Precision, I saw something kind of vaguely related to this issue at:

 

However, it wasn't my specific issue:

• That fix said it involved wake on lan and my issue occurred with the lan totally disconnected.
• It also said that fix involved an issue that happened after "the force or abnormal shutdown" and my issue happened after normal shutdowns, no forced or abnormal shutdown recorded by windows or bios.

 

 

So I decided to go ahead with the new Precision build and then troubleshoot this issue.

 

On October 14th, bios 1.16.0 was released for the now "old" machine. So after getting my new machine setup, I decided to update bios to 1.16.0 today before sending it in.

 

And it appears this may resolve this issue... at least I haven't been able to recreate it yet!

 

1.16 doesn't mention anything related, so not sure if 1.16 or 1.15 included the fix, or if the fix is tangential or derivative from the fix implemented in 1.15. 

 

I did notice after installing 1.16.0 that when I try and recreate the issue by setting the system time to the 18th of the month, 8:20 am (so I can see if it will happen at 8:24:11 on the 18th), if I click Apply and exit and let the machine boot into windows, and then shutdown, and enter bios again, the system bios either auto-updated to the current time or hadn't accepted the time change to the 18th.  When I was troubleshooting this issue extensively a few months ago, I never had that happen. So something has definitely changed in the system clock function. (before I recreated the problem both shutting down from windows and then seeing it auto-turn-on-by-itself, and also with all ssd drives physically removed entirely)

 

If I set the time now after bios 1.16 to the 18th at 8:20, then exit, it prompts me to save changes, and I choose yes, and if I then power off with the power button and then enter bios again the time is still the 18th.

 

And I let it tick past 8:24 powered off, and it didn't power itself on now.

 

After waiting 10 months with several firmware updates, I didn't think this issue would be resolved short of a motherboard swap. I guess I can't complain that I didn't have to send this one in, but the timing is amazing.

 

 

Anyway, if someone at Dell fixed this issue in the latest bios, either directly or as the side effect of fixing the other issue noted, THANK YOU!