Even though malware is possibility, I would concentrate on the LAN. as phil_I mentionend, check your LAN config. If in doubt, use a manual ip address, and connect only to a switch, no other participants (including printers, routers...). If it still happens, you've narrowed it down to the pc, the cable and the switch. That should be easier to debug.
As I said, all my Pcs have Intel Nics, The NICs are all allowed to WOL, and they all work as expected.
Thanks for the info, i'll think about the Intel driver when looking at this issue on my dh61ag.
I'm running a mediacenter on it and i guessed it was the guide update.
It's not a big problem for me.
Worth to mention is that it has no cable connected, only during install, but now it uses a wifi usb stick with a cisco driver.
Here's an update:
The computer did eventually wake up by itself after my last post. That was using Windows' included NIC driver instead of Intel's, and unchecking "Allow this device to wake up the computer".
Next, I downloaded the driver provided by rseiler, v17.1, which was the first driver to include the "Wake on" and "Wake on Link" settings in the Advanced tab of the NIC preferences. I set both to Disabled, as per the release notes. Computer woke up by itself. I should clarify that the driver download page for the DP43TF lists an older driver version as the latest NIC driver, so that's the one I had before.
I checked the lease time. It was set in the router to 1 day, although the computer actually had the lease time as around 1.5 days, and it certainly woke up before the expiration date/time. I set the lease time to a week. The computer now reports the expiration date as June 1, so if it wakes up before then, it will definitely rule that out as the cause.
At this time, the only other devices on the network are the router (3Com 3CRWDR101A-75) and a Sony LocationFree (used to stream TV through the network).
I scanned the computer with Trend Micro's HouseCall antivirus, in addition to Microsoft Security Essentials which is running full time. No malware detected.
Next I'm going to try installing driver v17.1 as a full install instead of "driver only" (which I did by unpacking the .exe with WinRAR and then having Device Manager look for a driver there), to see if it has any relevant settings. I will also turn off the LocationFree device next time I put the computer to sleep.
I'll let you know what happens. Thanks everyone for your contributions!
Diego
So if your computer did wake up after some time, what does 'powercfg -lastwake' (run this in an admin prompt) say?
WoL is usually so particular in that the BIOS and Device Manager have to be set perfectly for it to ever work, so how this works so well for you with it disabled in the BIOS (which should be the ultimate gatekeeper) continues to make no sense at all regardless of the state/version of the driver.
It's certainly tempting to try things with the driver (installing the full package will give your PROSet back, so it'll look like it did early in the thread), but the state of the WoL setting in the BIOS does leave the door open that it's not WoL at all but something else apparently network related (by all means disconnect the LocationFree wildcard). I would think that the only hope that it is WoL is if the BIOS setting is actually non-functional and it defaults to on and the three places you disabled it in the driver are being ignored. And this doesn't even get into what would be issuing the WoL command. What are the odds of all that?
I no longer think it's WoL.
If you want to eliminate DHCP being wrapped up in this (not that I've ever heard of DHCP causing this problem), then assign the machine a static IP address (gateway and DNS IPs would be the router, such as 192.168.1.1).
I'll copy it exactly the next time that it wakes up by itself, but basically it shows no device.
I think I got it!
I turned off the LocationFree base station and put the computer to sleep while I did some stuff. Several minutes later I needed to use the computer again, so I turned on the LocationFree and, wouldn't you know it, the computer woke up immediately. I tried it a couple more times and, indeed, turning on the LocationFree while the computer was sleeping caused it to wake up. I had found the culprit.
I turned off the settings that allow the LocationFree base station to connect to the Internet (so as to stream video over the 'net) and now the problem appears to have been fixed. I'll see what happens over the next couple of days when I leave the computer sleeping overnight, but at least turning on the station doesn't wake up the computer anymore.
The question remains as to why that device is waking up the computer if I have set all WoL configurations to off. Streaming over the Internet happens to be a feature that I don't use, but if I did, I'd still have a problem. As far as I can tell, there are no background processes or services related to LocationFree running on my computer, and I used LocationFree with the Asus board and didn't have this problem, so maybe it's the specific combination of the LocationFree and some bug with the Intel boards, or something.
At least I've solved my problem, I hope.
Correction: the settings on the LocationFree make no difference.
I connected another computer to the network and used it to try to open http://192.168.1.3 (the private IP address of the sleeping computer) with the browser. Lo and behold, the sleeping computer woke up. So it seems that any communication directed to the computer's private IP address may wake it up, but not always. The sleeping computer replies to pings, but pinging it doesn't wake it up, or at least it never did in the times I tried.
That one would make sense depending on the state of "Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer," normally located on the Power Management tab (unless PROSet is installed, in which case it's all different). Try making it so that "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is checked, "Allow this device to wake the computer" is unchecked, but the magic packet one is checked.
I'm mostly sure this is unrelated, but thought I'd mention it since it's the sort of thing that might interest you. What is the revision of your router? If it's not 1.12.04, there's upwards of 50 fixes for it, some of which are important. Note: doing this means that you'll have to reset it to defaults, so if you're not prepared to re-do your DSL setup and any other customizations you've done to it, you might want to think twice. Still, it's nice to be current.
Yep, it's revision 1.12.04A. Anyway, a problem with the router or any other external factor could only worsen a problem with the computer itself. If I set the computer to not wake up on LAN, it shouldn't matter what other devices do, right?
I'm using Intel's NIC driver now. I can set "Wake on Settings" to "OS controlled" and then uncheck "Allow this device to wake the computer". That will cause "Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer" to be checked and grayed out. Or I can set "Wake on Settings" to "Disabled", which makes the other settings unavailable. It has woken up with either combination.
Yesterday I changed the computer from port 1 to port 4 on the router. Then I tried waking it up a couple of times by turning the LocationFree on and off, then I left if sleeping and connected overnight. It didn't wake up. It will likely wake up eventually, though. As I said, if the computer was working right, what happens outside the NIC should be irrelevant.
Thank you again for your time and effort 
Yep, eventually woke up by a ping from the other computer.
I don't know what else there is to try. I keep thinking that it must be something unique to my system, otherwise it would be a widespread problem. But everything about my system is rather common. Intel board with onboard NIC, Windows 7 with various NIC drivers and settings, popular applications.
I guess I'll have to keep disconnecting the network cable every time, annoying as that may be.
Right, your computer is just not following the rules (a ping should never wake a computer if it's set to only wake by magic packet). Maybe it was built Over There (feel free to ignore Fringe references)?
An alternative to unplugging/plugging would be disabling/enabling the NIC with commands, maybe even on a scheduled basis. This can be done fairly easy with the devcon command. For example, when I want to disable my DVD drive (long story), I run:
devcon disable IDE\CDROMTSSTCORP*
The string is something I took from the "Hardware Ids" section of the Details tab in Device Man. Enabling it is the same but using "enable" instead.
Nah, just pulling the network cable is easier. Thanks for the tip, though!
I've been using and working with computers for about 25 years now. I think that this is the first time that a problem has bested me to the point of not even knowing what is causing it. Different motherboards (hence different NICs), different installations and different versions of Windows, different NIC drivers with different settings. It's practically different computers having the same issue, since no relevant component has remained unchanged.
Maybe some day I'll re-install Windows and see if it happens on a fresh installation with nothing else. Then add applications one by one. But I can't think of any application that would do that, and it would still be strange that an application can override OS and BIOS settings. I could also try a "live" boot of Linux, if those can be put to sleep. If it happens then, it would pretty much narrow it down to hardware. I think that's what I'll try next.
Thanks again!
I booted a "Live GNOME" CD of openSUSE 12.1, put the computer to sleep, and it woke up when I pinged it. So I guess it comes down to hardware or BIOS.
I don't think you said whether this happens from shutdown, standby, and hibernate or just one or two of them. I know when trying to get this functionality working (the opposite of your problem), it's very rare that you can get all three to work. If one of them doesn't work for you, then you might continue to use it instead of the others.
