Something Is Running Automatically

[Dipsy]

Build 9926 with updates. Sleep mode has been an issue and is a hit or miss proposition in that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Usually a reboot will get sleep mode functioning until some unknown process breaks it again.

In this instance however something was happening that not only started the CPU but brought the monitor out of it's sleep mode too. Nothing shows on the screen other than the desktop picture. When this first happened I did a CAD to bring up the task manager and noticed that two instances of drmActivator was running and consuming CPU cycles. I've had a problem with Big Fish Games not activating and had uninstalled what I thought was everything associated with BFG. I looked in the drive where I have games installed and noticed there was still a folder for the game that wouldn't activate. I deleted the folder and drmActivator was not showing in the background processes. The computer went into sleep mode and I figured the problem was resolved.

However, I woke up at 0200 this morning and noticed a light coming from the room where my Windows 10 computer resides. I got up to check and sure enough the CPU was running and the monitor was active. I did a CAD to get into task manager but couldn't see anything that was running. I rebooted and went back to bed. Woke up and the computer was in sleep mode. Went to the grocery store and when I got back the computer was shut down. I booted up and checked updates to see if one had ran and was waiting for a reboot, but no updates had been installed. Windows Defender scans come up clean and I have no idea at all what is going on. I like to leave my computers on 24/7 but I reckon I'll just have to start shutting down my Win 10 machine at night.

 

[Trouble]

You might want to have a look at
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools\Task Scheduler
Look at the root of the Task Scheduler Library for anything associated with drmActivator or BigFish whatever
Something similar has been going on with mine as well when I launch Resource Monitor all I see is TiWorker.exe eating a bit of CPU, Memory and Disk I/Os.
That's part of the Trusted Installer Service and I just chalked it up to Windows checking for updates.
I never really ever use "Sleep" but I do set my power plan option to turn off monitor after 25 minutes and every so often something is waking it up

 

[davehc]

How about the defragger? By default, that is always set on automatic for weekly.

 

[Dipsy]

Nothing from Big Fish is showing in task scheduler. Only things showing in there are Microsoft Windows items. It seems odd that nothing is showing in the "status of tasks that have started in the last 24 hours" box. Sure seems like there should be something showing in there since it appears that something woke up the computer and then caused it to shut down.

System is installed in a solid state drive and as far as I know Windows disables defragmenting for SSDs.

 

[davehc]

Doesn't disable it, but uses a method designed for SSDs, which it is able to detect, called !retrim.
This is the comment from MS:

"Windows is smart about how it treats your SSD.
This command should run on the schedule specified in the dfrgui UI. Retrim is necessary because of the way TRIM is processed in the file systems. Due to the varying performance of hardware responding to TRIM, TRIM is processed asynchronously by the file system. When a file is deleted or space is otherwise freed, the file system queues the trim request to be processed. To limit the peek resource usage this queue may only grow to a maximum number of trim requests. If the queue is of max size, incoming TRIM requests may be dropped. This is okay because we will periodically come through and do a Retrim with Storage Optimizer. The Retrim is done at a granularity that should avoid hitting the maximum TRIM request queue size where TRIMs are dropped."

I am not sure about what may be seen as running in the task manager, though. The defrag is designed to cease operation if it detects use on the computer.