WizardStan
Mega GP Mania
- Joined
- May 24, 2008
- Messages
- 16,731
I have two computers at my desk, my regular working machine and a Windows machine built for testing our Windows packages. The Windows machine doesn't generally get much use so it's constantly suspended, but every once in a while it'll wake itself up for seemingly no reason, especially the last few months. I just accepted it and didn't think anything of it, but science has uncovered the mystery!
Winter is very dry, and I become very staticy in dry weather. As such, I am constantly zapping myself on anything metal: stand up, desk goes zap; get a drink, cooler goes zap; back to my desk, chair goes zap. I observed and demonstrated through experimentation that whenever I have a large electrical discharge within 5 feet or so of this desktop it wakes up. Standing on an anti-static mat I touch my chair, it goes zap, and the computer boots up. I've done it enough times now to get a feel for whether the zap was big enough to trigger it or not and have not been disappointed: if it's a big zap it'll always come up, if it's a small zap it usually doesn't. I don't know the exact mechanism, maybe it's triggering the keyboard or mouse or the network or something, all I know is that static electricity makes this computer boot up every so often.
Winter is very dry, and I become very staticy in dry weather. As such, I am constantly zapping myself on anything metal: stand up, desk goes zap; get a drink, cooler goes zap; back to my desk, chair goes zap. I observed and demonstrated through experimentation that whenever I have a large electrical discharge within 5 feet or so of this desktop it wakes up. Standing on an anti-static mat I touch my chair, it goes zap, and the computer boots up. I've done it enough times now to get a feel for whether the zap was big enough to trigger it or not and have not been disappointed: if it's a big zap it'll always come up, if it's a small zap it usually doesn't. I don't know the exact mechanism, maybe it's triggering the keyboard or mouse or the network or something, all I know is that static electricity makes this computer boot up every so often.
