Laptop Asleep All Day Suddenly Wakes Then Sleeps Again

I registered for the sole purpose of finding an answer for this because all the Google searches in the world aren't giving me answers. I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop and while it works fine, it IS getting on in years (it's over 3 years old now). I'm really tech savvy as I've been around technology and computers ever since I was born but I am not quite as savvy at the nitty-gritty inner workings of computers and tend to stay away from stuff like administrative controls and system stuff because I feel like I'd break something. So please riddle me this: About two weeks ago I was on vacation and took my laptop with me. Everything worked just fine until I noticed my computer would act like it was possessed and would refuse to go to sleep sometimes or wake up in the middle of the night while the lid was closed. Before then, it had NEVER done that. Ever. A few Google searches later and I found the problem was the hotel's wifi for some asinine reason being set to wake my computer. IDK why that was since I've taken my laptop to a number of different hotels since I've had it and have never once had this problem at any of those hotels. Either way, I set it to not wake up my computer and all was super fine and dandy. And when I came home afterwards it was also still fine and dandy and would go to sleep when I told it to and stay asleep until I woke up in the morning to get on it. And then today, I was out almost all day and the computer was left at home in sleep mode, which has never been a problem as I've done it before once or twice. Except when I got home today and sat down to open my computer, it suddenly went from sleep to wake the moment I sat down without having even touched the lid! My wireless mouse is always kept off until I've opened the laptop lid and I hadn't touched it. I hadn't plugged in my phone (which is connected to a USB hub that's always connected to my laptop). Nothing also ran across my drawing tablet which is also constantly connected to the laptop and kept under my desk but not in a place where it could be brushed. So I sighed because ungh, it'd be doing so well! So I opened my laptop lid to see what the fuss was now because before in the hotel if I opened the lid, generally my login screen greeted me. But not this time. This time when I opened the lid the screen was just black. I figured it was just loading so I waited for a bit. Waited a bit more. Screen remained black. I tried touching the mice (touchpad and wireless mouse and even my tablet) to see if the black screen was just a hiding sleep screen but nothing made the black screen go away. And then all of a sudden it just went right back to sleep! Or at least I GUESS it was sleep. It looked more like a shut down which made me panic since I didn't see the orange sleep light come back even when I closed the lid again. But when I opened the lid again it woke back up like nothing had happened. Though I did see the Toshiba start up screen and got a "Windows Resuming" screen which I never usually get when it wakes up from sleep. And AFAIK it's doing ok but I'm kind of really worried because THAT never happened before, even during the incidents at the hotels. I did a mass ton of Google searches just now and found one that involved the Event Viewer and this is what I found for the time that this happened: The system has resumed from sleep. Sleep Time: 11/4/2012 2:33:05 AM Wake Time: 11/4/2012 2:33:04 AM Wake Source: RTC SleepTime 2012-11-04T02:33:05.114Z WakeTime 2012-11-04T02:33:04.190Z SleepDuration 0 WakeDuration 0 DriverInitDuration 0 BiosInitDuration 0 HiberWriteDuration 0 HiberReadDuration 0 HiberPagesWritten 0 Attributes 25090 TargetState 0 EffectiveState 0 WakeSourceType 3 WakeSourceTextLength 0 WakeSourceText What the hell is an "RTC"? I Googled that and only got "Real Time Clock" but I'm pretty damn sure I have none set because again, I'VE NEVER HAD THIS PROBLEM UNTIL THE PAST WEEK OR SO. I'm scared my computer might have some kind of virus that's changing all this **** for some reason, but I mean I've run all the scans I could with Norton, MBAM and even Kapersky's RootKit scanner and have found nothing so IDK what's going on or why this is suddenly happening. Does anyone else have any ideas???? I'd really appreciate any explanations and/or fixes. Other info: My system is Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2, 64bit Satellite P305 is the model. Anything else I can give that might help just ask. Please and thank you for anyone who can explain what's going on and why to me, because I'm getting nothing from Google searches on this.

the hotel's wifi for some asinine reason being set to wake my computer.

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In order to use the hotel's WiFi, did you have to install any software or did your browser receive some kind of plug-in? Because there shouldn't be any way for the hotel's WiFi to trigger a wake-up on your computer. You're either connected or you're not. The wake/sleep states are managed by your operating system and/or installed programs equipped with that capability.

I doubt you have a virus after running those anti-virus tools. As for the black screen after wake-up, I've seen this happen from time to time. It's usually due to Windows doing an update and not releasing GUI resources during the process. Closing the lid and opening it again tends to resolve it.

Anyway... the most likely solution for your issue is to roll back to a restore point prior to your trip. From there, just re-apply Windows updates that may have occurred between then and now.

No =/. We were staying at a Hilton hotel which we've stayed at plenty before since I got the laptop so my laptop is actually set up to automatically detect the hhonors network that those hotels have which only leaves me to connect to the internet from a browser. And IDK why the network was set to that either =/. When I went in to turn it off, I saw that my home network (that I obviously wasn't connected to at the time) was set up to not wake the computer but the hhonors one was. It's weird... And how are you getting line breaks in your reply I'm so sorry for the wall of text in the first post it deleted all my linebreaks for some reason ;A;.

I hadn't previously researched the network card wake-up option in Vista, but just read up on it. It's not easy to find. You can't set this by the registered network properties, but instead directly through the properties of the NIC (network interface card). I don't see any way to qualify this by a specific wireless network as you've suggested, meaning you've set your home network to not wake the computer, but the HHonors one to do so. Where did you locate this setting?

SOLVED: Laptop wakes itself up from sleep

No BIOS / network adapter settings helped for me.
I found a forum elsewhere fingering the laptop lid.

Sure enough, when I closed the lid on my customer's laptop immediately after telling it to go to sleep and had the lid closed before it had finished going to sleep, it stayed asleep where it had previously only stayed sleeping for a minute, tops.

I went into power options control panel and selected "Change what happens when closing the lid".
I changed it from "sleep" to "Do nothing".
I kept the power switch at "sleep"

Then I kept it open and set it to sleep.
It stayed asleep like a well fed baby.

I closed the lid and opened it. It woke up.
Uh huh.

With the lid open, I put it to sleep again and left it overnight.
It was still asleep in the morning.

Hope this helps some of you.

Looks like a defective hardware lid closure switch is at fault. FWIW, this model has a lid without a clasp/hook/latch. This may result in touchier sensitivity. These switches may be more likely to think they are open that a latch that has actual physical, mechanical movement of a full half centimeter to engage and disengage.

Yeah, it definitely sounds like there's something flaking with the sensor for the lid, William. I don't have a problem with my laptop lid in terms of sleep/wake-up, but I've disabled the automatic sleep on lid closure for convenience (which is needed if you want to close the lid while the computer is still working, like downloading files or applying updates). I like to manually launch the laptop into sleep.

Incidentally, did you know that you can cause your screen to shut off on command, without putting the computer to sleep? Use the lightweight nircmd utility. It's a very powerful little tool and you can do loads with it.

I have a shortcut for turning off the monitor, like so:
"nircmd.exe cmdwait 2500 monitor off"

The "2500" is the delay (adjustable), so that you can click a mouse or touchpad button without accidentally triggering wake.