Magic PC power-on?

[VirtualLarry]

Strange. I'm at a friend's house. There are two PCs in the room. Mine, and someone else's. When I powered mine on, just now - the other PC turned on too! WTF! It said "Resume from Hibernation", and then "Resuming Windows".

I don't get it. They are connected to the same network, and the AC wiring in this place may not be the best, but is there an explanation for this?

This has never happened before, when I turned this PC on.

The power-supply in that other PC is a cheap one that came with the case. I'm thinking that I should replace it. It almost sounds like something is shorting out.

Edit: I have a theory. Perhaps it turned on due to a scheduled scan by MSSE. Maybe. I dunno, the HD appears to be doing something, more than if it was just idle at the screensaver.

Still, pretty eerie that it did it just when I was turning on my computer.

 

[imagoon]

E-machines used to do that all the time. The supply would start faintly whistling and then power dips would make them boot for awhile until they seemed to do it spontaneously and then eventually the psu would die.

I used to do it with the heat gun to test the issue. I would plug the heat gun with the computer off in to the same strip, click on "max" on the gun for about ~900watts of load and watch the computer boot.

 

[DaveSimmons]

wake on LAN enabled in the BIOS?

 

[Tsavo]

Phasma in machina. Call Ghostbusters.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

I have seen PCs wake up for all sorts of odd reasons. In my case, i have my PC set to wake on USB, so if it gets a charge from USB it will come back on. Your friend's system probably has something set to wake it up that's getting disturbed when you start your pc in the same room or on the same network etc.

Or it was just a coincidence.