Unscheduled start-up

Question

Love my Mac but has one annoying feature. It wants to go on line everytime we get a phone call (I'm on dial-up modem). I'm not sure if it did this before I updated from Panther to Tiger. Is it because of the widgets I may have on the dashboard? (ie. current weather conditions widget) When we are not using, we unplug the phone line to solve the nuisance dial-up.
Is there a setting somewhere that I am missing to control this?
eMac   Mac OS X (10.4)  

Answer 1

Hi, George.
Do you mean unscheduled wake-up, instead of "unscheduled startup"?
If so, I suspect the following: In System Preferences > Print & Fax > Faxing, you have selected "Receive faxes on this computer." If that's the case, when your Mac is asleep and connected to a phone line, when the phone rings the computer will wake up and, if no one answers the phone, will attempt to answer the line after the specified number of rings.
To stop the Mac waking when the phone rings, deselect "Receive faxes on this computer" in the System Preferences > Print & Fax > Faxing tab.
If you have any Internet-related applications open when you put the Mac to sleep — e.g. Mail and Mail is configured to check for new mail every few minutes — then it will attempt to connect to the Internet to check for new Mail after the computer is awoken by the telephone call due to the "Receive faxes..." setting.
If you want it to wake for faxes but stop the automatic dial-up, in System Preferences > Network:
1. Select PPP in the Show pop-up menu.
2. Select the PPP tab
3. Click PPP Options.
4. In the resulting sheet, deselect the "Connect automatically when needed" checkbox.
5. Make any other changes under "Session Options" you desire.
6. Click OK. The sheet disappears.
7. Click Apply Now.
Now anytime you want to connect to the Internet, you will need to do so explicitly, e.g. in the Dial-up menu extra in the menu bar.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X