How to wake PC from sleep over network

[Golden Ape]

Evening. Am hoping someone can give me a few pointers here. I've a machine that I want to wake from sleep (S3 sleep) over my LAN. The basic idea is to wake it when I want to start backing up another machine to it.

Any idea how I should do this? I'd initially thought wake on lan was what I was after but it seems that is to start a machine that's off (and I can't get it to work). Then I though that just setting the network card to be allowed to 'wake this machine' in control panel might do the trick. But that doesn't seem to work either. What am I doing wrong?

Sorry should add - the machine to be brought out of sleep is running vista home premium.

 

[PhillyDee]

You will need a program to transmit a packet over the network to the target machine. It does use Wake-on-LAN. (WOL).

However, i have never done this, but did look into it.

 

[Golden Ape]

Yeh, I have the WOL thing a go with several programs but couldn't seem to get it to work (most likely I was doing something wrong though don't know what: enabled in windows, BIOS etc). I'm still not clear whether WOL is to wake a machine from off or from sleep?

edit: actually re-read your post. Ah I think you're saying I do need to use WOL in this situation. Sorry a bit of misunderstanding here. Mmm should give it another go then.