Ethernet port being used while PC is turned off?
Ethernet port being used while PC is turned off?
Greetings! So recently, i spent a few hours coding software. After i was done and i shut off my pc, i noticed both of the ethernet lights were on and blinking. Does this mean that Microsoft is sending data to their servers before the PC fully shuts off? I am scared that this might be the thing it does. How can i get rid of this issue? I have no idea if it's related to Windows or the PC itself.
Does your PC support Wake-On-Lan? Effectively, leaving the port powered to allow switching on over the network
50It does, but wake on lan is disabled in the BIOS.
16Power to the port may be hardwired for that feature to exist even though you have it disabled. Usually older models, but some do stay on just from being powered.
If it's a privacy concern check at your router and see if it holds an address.
14Try toggling ErP setting or similarly named EU energy setting in your UEFI. This should resolve the lights being on.
3Windows by default doesn't fully power off when you tell it to shut down. It goes into hibernation and keeps the network open for updates and will sometimes power back on to complete these updates.
If you want to fully power off, hold the left shift key when you click shut down. Or turn the power off elsewhere (eg. psu or power bar.) I'm sure there's another way to do it, or to prevent the behavior entirely.
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Your PC network card keeps the connection up in order to receive wake on LAN requests.
Any link activity whilst the PC is shutdown is packets that were broadcasted to the entire network. Other PCs, DHCP requests, etc send traffic to all devices on the network. So seeing some traffic whilst it's off is nothing to worry about.
44the link light is powered by the switch. it doesnt [necessarily] mean data transfer
27the link light is powered by the switch
No it's not. If you don't believe me, unplug your PC's power cord and watch the light go out.
If the power cord is plugged in but the computer is shutdown, and the light is still on, then that means the network adapter supports WoL or OOB management and must stay on for that reason, but the network switch connected to the adapter is not physically powering any lights.
15If the power cord is plugged in but the computer is shutdown, and the light is still on, then that means the network adapter supports WoL or OOB management and must stay on for that reason
Also worth noting that Windows is especially bad about actually shutting down when you tell it to shut down because something something fastboot. I've seen similar inconsistently on Linux but I strongly suspect that to be more edgecases with specific hardware and my install.
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this 100% factually incorrect.
6i don't really think so. unplug the power to your PC and the lights will turn off soon
1False
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You computer has a feature for Out of Band management. Either WoL as others have mentioned or vPro(Intel), iLon(HP), iDrac(Dell), as well a few other less popular systems depending on who makes your mainboard or NIC.
This leaves the power on to the network card so that it can be used even with your computer off. It does not have access to your normal computer in the this case. Just the ability to turn on/off the system and sometimes options to update BIOS/UEFI firmware and send a console image to either a client or browser.
The lights are blinking because broadcasts packets from other devices on your LAN are sent to every device. This is normal and expected behavior.
26The lights are blinking because broadcasts packets from other devices on your LAN are sent to every device. This is normal and expected behavior.
Just building off of this, modern computers are chatty as heck and there's just constantly little bits of chatter spamming out on LANs. This is normal and expected behavior
5More rarely: some poorly configured USB controllers can actually provide enough backwash power to the motherboard that some LEDs still blink, like the Ethernet indicators.
I ran into this myself, I notice the lights being on, and they stayed on when I unplugged the computer. Took me a good 5m of debugging to figure it out.
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Permanently Deleted
17He needs to install GhostBSD to defeat them.
6Permanently Deleted
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Unfortunately Linux doesn't have any anti-ghost packages as they're much more common in Windows
5ghostscript?
4Permanently Deleted
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As other said, it's surely related to the LAN traffic and not the WAN traffic only your router sends some packets but it shouldn't be Windows. Little tips if you don't want telemetry and tracking, simply use Linux.
15Its the other CPU in your cpu/nic
6Maybe but probably not. Its just frames coming in from the rest of the network. The device on the other end doesn't know the computer is off.
Alternatively if the card still has power it might be just in the state Windows left it in. I could imagine it would be good to not have to reinitialize the card all the time.
Why are you concerned about telemetry on shutdown? That wouldn't make any sense as it sends your data and checks the system status in the background while you use your computer. Also it is not great practice to totally shutdown at night as that's the time when update happen. It also could theoretically wear out hardware but chances are that's not a problem on newer machines
6Also it is not great practice to totally shutdown at night as that's the time when update happen.
updates can be installed when it's turned on, though, and it well consume much less power.
It also could theoretically wear out hardware but chances are that's not a problem on newer machines
what do you mean? I don't understand.
if you mean the HDDs spinning down and up, then- if it only happens at shutdown, it shouldn't wear them out, additionally as I know HDDs (consumer models at least) don't like endless spinning either
- windows probably shuts it down regularly when it's not in use. this is a setting in the power profile
- as I know, frequent spindowns only increase wear out if it happens very often, like every 10 seconds and such because of the drive's garbage internal power saving setting. that's why I always keep it at least 30 minutes or more
5I've never seen hardware die because of repeated shutdowns. Also most people aren't running HDDs these days as flash storage is cheap and plentiful.
For updates you need to be turned on for them to install. That's why shutting it down isn't good practice. Just set a maintenance window and put the computer to sleep.
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no Linux?
5i noticed both of the ethernet lights were on and blinking
So usually one of the lights on the port indicates the link state (up/down and if its at full speed or a reduced speed) and the other light indicates data flow. Both lights blinking suggests either a really shoddy link state or an unusual implementation of status lights on the port. Do both lights blink while its booted and actively transferring a large file? Can you find documentation of how your device implements the indicator LEDs? (I can't tell if that's a dongle or a port on your computer)
3I'm sure it's legacy thing from back in the day, flashing means it's sending or receiving, solid means it's idle.
2I believe you can stop it by turning off a feature called "fast startup" or something like that.
1I really apologize for the Bad English. My native language is not English whatsoever.
1disconnect ur pc from power physically if the behavior continues which i would guess it will its probably something connected to ur wifi doing something in a dumb way if it stops thats wierd as fuck but forcing the pc to shut down by holding the power button should do the trick since that usually tells the motherboard to tell the power supply to shut off and i dont think windows gets a say on that.
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