Standby and Backup Oddity

After doing a full system backup with HDClone from within Windows XP sp3 I
noticed something odd.

I keep this desktop on a short leash for power going into standby after 20
minutes and rarely turning it OFF. After the backup completed I disconnected the
external HDD and walked away. I was doing other things in the area and, after 20
minutes, I noticed the "Saving Your Settings" message Windows displays as it
goes into standby. However, a second or two after it went into standby it woke
up! I let it go through this cycle a few times and figured the backup software
had disabled the standby feature to complete the backup.

I rebooted the system and waited - still awoke from standby on its own!

I shut down the system and waited a minute and it *still* awoke from standby on
its own!!

Finally I shut down the system, pulled the plug from the wall, waited a minute
and restarted. FINALLY the auto restart from standby disappeared.

Anyone have ANY idea how this can happen. I have done this every month or two
for a year or so and never seen this before. Since the backup software is run
from within a running Windows XP system I assume it is running some kind of
virtual machine but I still find it surprising that some code would require the
removal of power to stop it.

Any Ideas or WAGs?

John

--

Probably unrelated, but some of our XP machines
turn on the screen (after it turns off from
inactivity) and keep it on for no reason. Not all
the XP machines, just a few. Dell laptops.

So something unknown convinces them that there's
activity when there isn't.

I overcome it by shutting the lid almost all the
way so that the screen turns of on some internal
screen power switch.

All the machines are powered up 24/7 so it's best
to keep the screens dark where possible.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.