How do I do Wake on Lan?

Nick_

n00b
Joined
Feb 5, 2005
Messages
34
Hello,

I'm a non-technical guy so this is something that doesn't come easy to me like it does to many of you.

Basically, I have a computer in my closet that runs 10 hard drives. It's on all the time and only about 5 people access it throughout the day. In an average day, it sits idle for 18 hours and its hard to physically turn the PC on and off for one person here because he is in a wheechair. The problem is, it's costing me nearly $100 a month just to run the darn thing. I would like to put the computer into standby or even shut it down when I'm not using it and single wake it up when someone needs to use it.

However, I have no idea how to do this. The computer is a home built computer. Abit NF7, XP 2500+, 512MB of ram, 10 HD, windows XP SP2. I have no idea what to do in the BIOS or windows to get this to work.

Can someone help me find a freeware application and a step by step on how to do this? I'm really desperate to get this done. I read this: http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/jpo/software/wakeonlan/mini-howto/ and I also tried using http://www.dirfile.com/advanced_ip_scanner.htm to get it start again, but it just does not work.

please help me, I am desperate
 
Most NIC cards will have a wire that can be run from that card to the Motherboard (if the motherboard supports it, I believe yours does), to allow for the PC to be turned on.
You must then go into the BIOS and enable it. I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly where. If you know how to get into the BIOS then simply go thru all the menu's until you find it. It should read something similar to "Enable WOL", "Wake on LAN", enable, something like that.

Once all this is done you can then go here - DSL Reports and use it to turn on your PC. You must know your IP address and your MAC address.

Hope that helps.
 
I've found the even with plug in pci cards you don't really need the little cable, and it's not even a question with onboard nics.

The BIOS option might also be called something more obscure like "Power on by PCI device".

For such a handy feature that's not hard to implement, there's suprisingly few simple free apps for sending magic packets, I use a little executable called "WakeOnLanGui".
 
thanks. However there is a problem

now with wake up by PCI device, the computer will not go into standby or shutdown. Once I turned off wake up by PCI device, it was able to go back into standby and it could be shutdown. Before when wake by PCI, if I tried to put the computer into standby it would just come out of standby. When I tried to shut down, it would just reboot.

What do I do now? I'm so close, yet so far :(
 
anyone? I've been playing around with this for hours with no luck. I updated the BIOS, drivers, I played around with everything I can think of and it still does the same thing
 
Nick_ said:
thanks. However there is a problem

now with wake up by PCI device, the computer will not go into standby or shutdown. Once I turned off wake up by PCI device, it was able to go back into standby and it could be shutdown. Before when wake by PCI, if I tried to put the computer into standby it would just come out of standby. When I tried to shut down, it would just reboot.

What do I do now? I'm so close, yet so far :(

I had a problem with a computer doing this exact same thing. I found that the problem was that the PCI IDE controller I had in there was causing it to do that. Since you said it is running about 10 hard drives this may be the case for you.

I do have a ghetto solution for you. I run a laptop mobo as one of my servers. It lacks a lot of BIOS features like wake on lan etc. (most importantly boot after power loss) It is sitting in a hard to reach corner. I took an old phone cord and cut the ends off. I attached the wires to the power switch and ran them up to my room. I attached a button to the other side. Server needs to be rebooted or started, I just push the button sitting next to me. Just set XP to shut down when the power button is pushed, and you have a remote on/off button. :cool:
 
brom42 said:
I had a problem with a computer doing this exact same thing. I found that the problem was that the PCI IDE controller I had in there was causing it to do that. Since you said it is running about 10 hard drives this may be the case for you.

I do have a ghetto solution for you. I run a laptop mobo as one of my servers. It lacks a lot of BIOS features like wake on lan etc. (most importantly boot after power loss) It is sitting in a hard to reach corner. I took an old phone cord and cut the ends off. I attached the wires to the power switch and ran them up to my room. I attached a button to the other side. Server needs to be rebooted or started, I just push the button sitting next to me. Just set XP to shut down when the power button is pushed, and you have a remote on/off button. :cool:

Do you keep the led's on a long cord too... so you can check its status from your desk? :p
 
kleptophobiac said:
Do you keep the led's on a long cord too... so you can check its status from your desk? :p

Hmmm, if I use some ethernet cable I could run the power and reset buttons and the power and hdd leds. ;) Laziness at its best.
 
brom42 said:
I had a problem with a computer doing this exact same thing. I found that the problem was that the PCI IDE controller I had in there was causing it to do that. Since you said it is running about 10 hard drives this may be the case for you.

I do have a ghetto solution for you. I run a laptop mobo as one of my servers. It lacks a lot of BIOS features like wake on lan etc. (most importantly boot after power loss) It is sitting in a hard to reach corner. I took an old phone cord and cut the ends off. I attached the wires to the power switch and ran them up to my room. I attached a button to the other side. Server needs to be rebooted or started, I just push the button sitting next to me. Just set XP to shut down when the power button is pushed, and you have a remote on/off button. :cool:


it would be almost impossible and unpractical to do this. Keep in mind, the server has to be accessed from several computers within the home. I can't wire a switch to every computer in the house.
 
Nick_ said:
thanks. However there is a problem

now with wake up by PCI device, the computer will not go into standby or shutdown. Once I turned off wake up by PCI device, it was able to go back into standby and it could be shutdown. Before when wake by PCI, if I tried to put the computer into standby it would just come out of standby. When I tried to shut down, it would just reboot.

What do I do now? I'm so close, yet so far :(

This is annoying me, I think I may know what causes this, but I can't remember how to fix it.
I think it might be another setting that piggybacks off/conflicts with wake on pci setting, like "boot on lan" which is something else entirely.
 
MartinX said:
This is annoying me, I think I may know what causes this, but I can't remember how to fix it.
I think it might be another setting that piggybacks off/conflicts with wake on pci setting, like "boot on lan" which is something else entirely.


I have boot on lan disabled and even when it is enabled it still does the same thing
 
Perhaps just set some really strict power save modes so the disks spin down after time? *shrug* Just a thought. :)
 
Nick_ said:
I have boot on lan disabled and even when it is enabled it still does the same thing

Well it's probably not that then.

I distinctly remember coming across some setting when I was getting my own wake-on-lan working, where there was a proviso that if it was enabled the card could cause the PC to wake up anytime another network device just browsed the network (as they all do periodically).

It may have been one of the settings in the NICs advanced hardware settings, possibly in and around that option to let (or not) windows power down the NIC save energy.

Slightly amusingly (to me anyway), I'm on my Mac right now, so I can't check, but I originally set up WOL so I could power on and control (via the MSs Mac version of rdc) one of my PCs from my Mac laptop. But I recently changed the NIC in that PC, so I don't know the MAC to sent the magic packet to.

*Update* I just checked the Hardware settings on my nic, and under the "power management" tab is the option (and the warning) I was thinking of.
 
Slawterr said:
Perhaps just set some really strict power save modes so the disks spin down after time? *shrug* Just a thought. :)


that may be an option if I can get this to work
 
MartinX said:
Well it's probably not that then.

I distinctly remember coming across some setting when I was getting my own wake-on-lan working, where there was a proviso that if it was enabled the card could cause the PC to wake up anytime another network device just browsed the network (as they all do periodically).

It may have been one of the settings in the NICs advanced hardware settings, possibly in and around that option to let (or not) windows power down the NIC save energy.

Slightly amusingly (to me anyway), I'm on my Mac right now, so I can't check, but I originally set up WOL so I could power on and control (via the MSs Mac version of rdc) one of my PCs from my Mac laptop. But I recently changed the NIC in that PC, so I don't know the MAC to sent the magic packet to.

*Update* I just checked the Hardware settings on my nic, and under the "power management" tab is the option (and the warning) I was thinking of.


I already played around with all the advanced options under the network card. After a couple of hours I ran out of things to try. Then I played around with Power Management under the network card and neither helped.


Ahhh! This is driving me crazy
 
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