Vista is a boat anchor. In order to keep all of us on the proper upgrade path (sending in our money) Microsoft must create products which have no respect for hardware or people. You will never see a solution until we (our government) breaks up Microsoft. XP is discontinued and the lies about Vista will keep being told until they become truth. We complain about the price of gas but for gosh sakes I have spent more for computers in the last 20 years than gas.

I have had this problem.
I found it was because Media Centre was set to download TV show information automatically. Turned it to manual and solved my problem.
Windows Event Log is a good place to see what time your laptop turns on by its self, and if it’s the same time every day (as mine was) you know it probably isn’t a crash but a program turning it on.

I don’t know if Apple ever got around to fixing it, but this has also been a pretty big issue with Macbooks and Macbook Pros.

However, when I had this issue with my Macbook it was actually a hardware failure, not software.

have you controlled if vista restarted to install downloaded updates? it is in the logs

I’ve never had this happen to me, actually – with either my old Toshiba Tecra M7 Tablet (ran XP and then Vista Beta) or my current Lenovo X60 Tablet (ran XP and now Vista).

But anyway, it seems like you would want to disable the feature JK complains of – automatic reboot upon BSOD. That means that if your machine crashes while in Sleep mode, you’ll just find it powered down.

In XP, open the “System” control panel, and then go to the “Advanced” tab. In Vista, you can go to the “System” control panel and then click “Advanced system settings”.

Then click “Settings…” beside startup and recovery, and un-check “Automatically restart” under the system failure section.

This is why I like hibernation. On my XP laptops that has always worked flawlessly, and when it’s off it’s really off.

Sure, it’s a bit slower to start, but we’re still talking seconds rather than minutes. On a normal closeable laptop, setting it to hibernate when you close the screen suits me perfectly. Just close the laptop, lift it off the table and gently slide it into the case and once you’re done with that, you get the bee-beep as it shuts down.

Standby is great when getting up to go to a meeting in the building when you’re not sure you’re going to be needing the machine, but as soon as it goes into the case, it gets hibernated. That way, no nasty surprises like the one mentioned here.

I’ve had this happen a couple of times. The reason it happened was I either tossed or dropped the computer bag. The laptop noticed it and automatically turned the hard drive off which on my system sometimes causes a reboot. When it comes back up its in startup mode and waiting for login, but since it started with the case closed it doesn’t understand that it should be asleep.

Since I learned this I’ve been much more careful with my laptop bag.

Chris

Have a look in device manager and go through the properties of every single device, no matter how innocuous. One of them may be set to wake windows automatically. I found one the other day and removed it. I can’t recall what device it was and unfortunately don’t have my Vista laptop with me,but I recall being incredulous about why on earth would this option be set for this device. Something to check anyway.

I got so fed up with Windows and its annoying problems that I sat myself down and thought: ‘What do I really need in my mobile device?’

1 Instant on AND instantly usable
2 Readable display anywhere (except under water)
3 Compatible with Office docs
4 Carried with me always
5 Doesn’t get hot
6 Isn’t noisy
7 QWERTY keyboard with backlight
8 Instant record button

I bought myself a Nokia E90 Communicator and it fulfills all my mobile needs.

Last night I took my OQO with Vista out of hibernate and turned on Wifi. After ten minutes of noisy, hot updating and disk thrashing I switched it off again and used my Nokia. For extended thumb typing you can’t beat the OQO though so I’m looking forward to trying that Apple thingy on it.

Amazing. During Vista’s development, I remember watching a Channel 9 video where the devs indicated this was an area they were specifically fixing as Windows XP was known for this problem. They clearly didn’t get it right.

I’ve heard of this happening where the OQO melted some plastic in the bag…

Can’t wait until a LiON battery explodes from the heat!

JK
http://mdjosephkim.blogspot.com/

I had the same problem with Windows XP. It was so hot, had I left it in my bag any longer, it may catch on fire or something. I now learned to shut down every single time.

I don’t use Hibernation for that very reason so not a factor here.

I had the same problem. My issue was with Vista’s automatic updates – they were set to wake up the computer at 2am every day. I disabled automatic updates and the problem went away.

After that suggested solution from Dan, I hope JK will follow up with another post and that everyone here who’s had that problem will post to say if it was solved or not.

I used to have this problem with my laptop running Vista Business x86. What happens is the laptop sometimes wakes up from sleep mode by itself. The system does not actually crash and restart. The message you get when this happens for the first time is a little ambiguous.

The problem is due to a power saving option which makes the computer hibernate after being in sleep mode for so long. Perhaps the motherboard doesn’t support it or something, which causes it to spontaneously wake up sometimes…

Anyway, to fix it, go to Control Panel -> Classic View -> Power Options -> Change plan settings (you might want to do this for all three power plans if you use them all) -> Change advanced power settings. Expand Sleep, then expand Hibernate after. For my laptop, it was set to 1080 minutes by default for both ‘On battery’ and ‘Plugged in’. Set them both to ‘Never’, and click on OK.

It’s been a few months since I did that and I’ve never had that problem since. Hope this helps.