Built a gaming PC back in 2018 (windows 10, GTX1080, i7, eset security).
For the past year or so it wakes up every now and then and for a few months it started waking up to my logged in desktop screen. Hasnt happened for about a month or so but it still eakes up even with my mouse and keyboard disconnected. I don't do any tormenting or anything sketchy. It's a really clean machine built for gaming, YouTube, office work stuff. I don't visit any "low brow" sites (that's what my tablet (not connected to the PC) is for). It didn't start happening after any specific download that I can remember.
Anyway, I can't find anything relevant online that helps me so I figured I'd ask here if anyone knows what this is about.
Wake on LAN. You can turn this off in the power options I think, or in the BIOS.
As for automatic login, that I cannot say. Maybe you activated the option somewhere?
Whenever I wake it normally, it always opens to password input but every now and then I pass by the room and notice it's lights are on when I know for sure I put it to sleep and sometimes when I wiggle the mouse to take it off screen saver, it's logged in. Never really messed with any settings in that respect but I'll dig deeper there
Maybe someone is doing remote desktop on you.
That's essentially what I'm trying to figure oout. I've never done any sort of screen share and I run a pretty clean machine unless something snuck in on a game mod I downloaded
Time to run an offline malware detection tool. Something you can boot into using a USB stick or something.
Suggest after use disconnect it from the network. Observe if it still wakes up and logged in. If it does not then you can assume that your system is compromise.
There is also this. https://superuser.com/a/1250547, but since you mentioned that it is intermittent then I doubt it might be this.
Another action you could do is change the password of your account. See if it still logged in.
Yeah I would be a bit worried about that...