Remotely Waking Up Your PC

As far as I know there are two things going on.

  1. you can wake a machine by using the IP address that the router has for it on file w/o sending a magic packet.

  2. if you check the “only allow management stations” checkbox, the PC will only respond to a magic packet.

#2 is always going to be more reliable because you are using the MAC address. But #1 will wake the PC simply by attempting to access it from your local network.

I use to wake up my home pc from school or work all the time. Fortunately the router has a built in WoL option so no tools are needed.

The difference between selecting the option to “wake from shutdown” and “allow this device to wake the computer” is quite simple after you figure it out. For several times. Until it sticks in your head. The first allows to wake up on lan from a shut down computer while the second allows the same with a computer in stand by. If you only select the first you will be able to wake the stopped computer but if you leave it idle and it enters stand by that’s it. It’s very weird until you get it.

There are some options that need to be enabled in Bios for WoL to work. It depends on what kind of lan card you use. Usually you go to power management stuff and select things like “allow PCIE device to wake the computer” and other. I use the build in card on my motherboard that is connected on PCIE so I need that selected.

If you’re going to say “remotely waking up your PC,” why don’t you incorporate how to do so on all operating systems that run on PCs (or at least the more popular alternatives to Microsoft Windows)?

In fact, I’ve noticed quite a few times that your posts are very Microsoft Windows oriented.

Nonetheless, it is still your blog and you may do as you wish, but I think it’s also appropriate to appreciate non-Windows operating systems.

Tangentially, why is it that your CAPTCHAs are always “orange” (or at least appear to always be that to me)?

I don’t understand why those checkboxes make a difference. Shouldn’t this be an OS-independent feature?

I am running Linux on my PC, and I am trying to achieve the same result. When the computer is turned off, I see that the LED of the NIC shows some activity…

Hmmm, isn’t there something else that should be taken into account?

Maybe it`s worth it…
2 hours is 7200 seconds, if the 20 feet takes you 15 seconds to walk for the round-trip. After only 480 uses you get your investment back and start getting some profit.

I’ve tried to get wake on lan to work for my office computer, but only with limited success. The computer seems to wake up… disk starts activity and the monitor activates although nothing displays and I’m able to access files on the remote machine, but the pain is that attempting to Remote Desktop to the recently woken machine fails. The initial log-in screen appears, but as soon as the password is entered, Remote Desktop promptly closes. Worse, attempting to do this seems to completely lock up the computer so that no amount of banging on its keyboard will allow it to respond. File sharing ceases to function and even the power button no longer works. At that point, I can only unplug it and start over.

I’ve tried to get wake on lan to work for my office computer, but only with limited success. The computer seems to wake up… disk starts activity and the monitor activates although nothing displays and I’m able to access files on the remote machine, but the pain is that attempting to Remote Desktop to the recently woken machine fails. The initial log-in screen appears, but as soon as the password is entered, Remote Desktop promptly closes. Worse, attempting to do this seems to completely lock up the computer so that no amount of banging on its keyboard will allow it to respond. File sharing ceases to function and even the power button no longer works. At that point, I can only unplug it and start over.

This poster from microsoft.public.windowsxp.general seems to have the same problem:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_frm/thread/793b1dd00745a352/82f4a808325be335?lnk=stq=remote+desktop+wake+on+lan+does+not+workrnum=1hl=en#82f4a808325be335

Hi,

I’ve posted how to wake computers using only Powershell and .Net Framwork on my personal blog:

http://viniciuscanto.blogspot.com/2007/01/wake-on-lan-powershell-acordando.html

I used a class to form and send udp packets. It’s simple, and you don’t need anymore mc-wol program.

Thank you and congratulations!


Vinicius Canto scripterbr_at_gmail_dot_com
MVP Visual Developer - Scripting
MCP Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP e SQL Server 2000
Blog sobre Scripting: http://viniciuscanto.blogspot.com

Too bad that my home network is wireless. I have to stand up and walk this several steps to wake up my pc physically. It’s a shame that wake on wireless is still so rarely supported.

"why get out of your chair and walk 20 feet when you can spend two hours figuring out how to do it without moving at all?"
So true, brother, so true.

I use my DD-WRT enabled router to wake up computers – it works great.

Mafro stated that you can get NetGear routers that don’t support WoL out-of-the-box to do it by changing the SubNet mask to 255.255.255.128 and then using the broadcast address 192.168.0.127.

I’ve done this and whilst the router (DG834DG) doesn’t now complain about an invalid IP address (as it does if you enter 192.168.0.255) the WoL packet doesn’t even get registered in the router’s log. Changing the forwarding IP to 192.168.0.4 (for example) is recorded in the log as a rule match but doesn’t turn the PC on because it is off and has no IP - the network needs to have the broadcast packet, correctly 192.168.0.127 but the NetGear router doesn’t seem to forward this as Mafro suggests.

If Mafro reads this, can you enlighten me how you got it working? If not, anyone else using a NetGear router got it to work without using the “patched” firmware?

Thanks.

Hi guys,

I’m trying for over a week to make WOL to work on a linux box, several thousand miles away :slight_smile: . I have made the necessary modifications to the BIOS and I’ve enabled WOL support in the PC’s network card. The problem is that the router through which the PC is connected is behaving strangely…

Whenever I try to wake the PC over the internet, I succeed once every 10 or 20 tries. I am using the IP that it is reported by pinging the dns name of the PC (I’m using DynDNS). Although the PC is off, the IP that it is recorded in the DynDNS database should be the IP assigned to the router, right? Am I missing something?

The reason I believe that the router is the major cause of the problem is that whenever I ping my machine, when the machine is off, ping fails. Again I would expect the router to respond back… I should also mention that the hardware firewall inside the router is off. Unfortunately I don’t remember the router’s brand or model.

Could it be that the IP I’m using doesn’t correspond to the IP of the router? The strange thing is that I access the PC remotely, I shut it down and right after I try to wake it up again (before the ISP assignes a new IP – I have a DSL connection), and the PC might or might not boot, depending on its mood :slight_smile: .

Any ideas?

Thank you in advance

hey guys,

i have succeeded in turning on my computer through lan network, but over the internet it still does now work. I have been using a monitor to see if the magic packets are sent in over the internet, and they are. Once I turn off my computer, and send the packets through the internet, i could see the ethernet cable lights on my network card blink as soon as i send it. From what I can see, the correct packets are getting sent, but the computer isn’t turning on for some reason. Please help out! thanks in advance

I need to do exactly what Chris is talking about above- waking up a computer when the lights come on (and putting it to sleep when they go off would be great too). How could I get this set up and what sofware would be needed? THANKS!! :slight_smile:

Katie, I don’t know if you’ll ever see this, but there is one option that might work for you. Some motherboards (I have no idea how many) have an option in BIOS for how the computer is to react to a power failure, called (on my machine) “AC BACK Function”. This has three options: Soft-Off, Full-On and Memory. What might work for you is the Full-On function combined with hooking the computer to the same power source as the lights. When you turn on the lights, the computer recieves current and it starts. Downside is of course that it will lose power as soon as the lights are turned off, but that maybe can be worked around.

Not sure if this is an at all reasonable solution, but I just thought…

Hi Jeff Atwood,

Your explanation is cool. But how does it work with wireless access through wireless router?

Thanks
Sovath

Check out Auto WOL using DD-WRT at

http://gaddgets.blogspot.com/

If you are web hosting and want your PC/Mac to sleep when there is no traffic. Obviously not for mission critical web hosting …

Johan, Thanks for the thought. The main issue is that my professor wants his computer to wake up quickly when he comes back to his office. I was hoping that we could do this through motion detection or light sensing, but I haven’t found a great way to do this yet. If you have the right product, I’m sure our lab is willing to pay for it. I’m a mech. engineer, not computer engr, so I’m really lost!

Hey, I have a problem. I have a media center setup in my home. Have it setup so I can turn it on from being powered off by wol. Problem is that if I turn on a light or the AC it boots my media center on. How can I prevent this from happening. I have a wol cable hooked up to my mobo and I think my bios settings are correct. So, any help would be nice or point me in a direction with ppl that have similar problems.

Thanks again for your help in advance,
Sincerely,
bitor
email: s1pamstuff@hotmail.com