Wake up on lan will not work!

craig20102010 · 23 Dec 2010 at 17:11

iv been trying for a while now to get my pc to WOL

Motherboard: Asus M4a77TD Pro
Network Card: Onboard Realtek

Router Linksys using Tomato firmware so that i can use the WOL feature on there...

i can turn my laptop on using the WOL feature on the router but i cant turn on my other PC.. Both connected by cable

one thing i noticed about laptop compared to the big pc is the lights on the network card stay on compared to the big PC which the network card seems to turn off and have no lights still lit.. which i think is the problem as the card isnt going into standby mode?

iv looked in the Bios and all i can see is two things for Ethernet Card controller which is enabled and i cant remember what the other thing is but its also enabled but they appear to be the only two things about the network card nothing mentions anything about WOL or to that effect in the Bios..

iv been into windows settings and changed all the WOL settings to enabled but not looked at anything else

any ideas would be great as this one has me stuck!

cheers

Firegod · 23 Dec 2010 at 18:43

Nothing like "Low Power Mode" or similar in the BIOS? We have Dell PC's at work, and with this enabled along with WoL, we can't remotely power on the PC's. So if you have anything like that, under perhaps a Power Management section, try disabling it.

Hope that helps.

ns400r · 23 Dec 2010 at 22:00

"Power on from S5 by PME"

Skidilliplop · 24 Dec 2010 at 12:00

Thinking outside the box as it's 99% lilkely to be a setting in bios somewhere, buuuut the port it's connected to and the card itself are set to auto negotiate speed and duplex arn't they? Default behavior of NICs set for WOL is to drop to 10meg half duplex while the machine is off. If the switch port can't drop to match then it won't work as the magic packet can't get to the NIC if a speed mismatch exists.

craig20102010 · 28 Dec 2010 at 13:34

ns400r said:
"Power on from S5 by PME"

This is the setting i needed to change thanks a lot..

works a treat now can now log into the router and switch it on! Cheers

Any ideas what that whole line stands for? as in the "S5 by PME" what does that mean?

SimonR · 28 Dec 2010 at 14:12

Google is your friend... type in S5 PME and the first hit is ... To allow wakeup from powered-down state S5, wakeup on PME (Power Management Event) is also required.

That is, I believe, what you were looking for .

S5 is a powered down state, from a google search of S5 suspend states..

S1: the most power-hungry of sleep-modes. All processor caches are flushed, and the CPU(s) stop executing instructions. Power to the CPU and RAM is maintained, Basically old machines are more likely to support S1.

S2: The CPU is powered off, this state is rather less found.

S3:In this state, RAM is still powered, although it is almost the only component that is. Since the state of the operating system and all applications, open documents, etc. lies all in main memory, the users can resume work exactly where they left. The computer is faster to resume than to reboot, secondly if any running applications have information this will not be written to the disk, This state is comparatively more common.

S4: In this state, all content of main memory is saved to non-volatile memory such as a hard drive, preserving the state of the operating system, all applications, open documents etc. That means that after coming back from S4, the user can resume work where it was left off in much the same way as with S3. The difference between S4 and S3, apart from the added time of moving the main memory content to disk and back, is that a power loss of a computer in S3 makes it lose all data in main memory.

S5: Soft Off-- Some components remain powered so the computer can "wake" from input from the keyboard, LAN, or USB device.

and PME stands for Powered Management Event

baradanikto · 22 Mar 2011 at 19:42

I stumbled across this thread searching for the same basic answer. However, I have an ASUS M4A77TD MOBO and I'm trying to figure out if it supports WOL. If so, will the same answer from this thread work? How can I tell if the MOBO supports WOL? I too have been struggling with this for a while, so, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Skidilliplop · 24 Mar 2011 at 14:02

Check the motherboard manual. It will tell you in there if WoL is supported.

baradanikto · 24 Mar 2011 at 17:56

Thanks for the reply. I've already done that. In fact, I've compared my manual (M4A77TD) with the original poster's (M4A77TD Pro) and the BIOS settings appear the same. In fact, I have the same symptoms. My NIC goes dead when the pc goes into standby (ie. no light). I've tried contacting ASUS. Initially, they told me that the board did not support WOL. Then, after I asked them what the power setting for "S5 for PME" was, they appologized and reversed their statement. I asked them to escalate the problem and put me in touch with someone who knows how to get WOL to work. I haven't heard from them since. That's why I posted here. If the original poster reads this, please contact me.

baradanikto · 31 Mar 2011 at 01:47

I'm hoping that the original poster will see this post and respond. I seem to have the same problem...

the network card seems to turn off and have no lights still lit..

I've updated the LAN drivers, but, this did not resolve the problem. The LAN lights go out when the pc goes to standby.

Skidilliplop · 31 Mar 2011 at 09:53

baradanikto said:
I'm hoping that the original poster will see this post and respond. I seem to have the same problem...

I've updated the LAN drivers, but, this did not resolve the problem. The LAN lights go out when the pc goes to standby.

Updating the drivers won't get you far with WoL as it happens in hardware, the OS (and hence loaded drivers) are ineffectual when the system is powered down.
If updating anything would help you'd need to re-flash the NIC's ROM

Demon · 31 Mar 2011 at 10:46

Skidilliplop said:
Updating the drivers won't get you far with WoL as it happens in hardware, the OS (and hence loaded drivers) are ineffectual when the system is powered down.
If updating anything would help you'd need to re-flash the NIC's ROM

This is rather incorrect for a lot of setups.

WOL is really backwards in a lot of implementations, the OS must effectively put the NIC into the correct state before the machine is powered off..

I've just been through the loop on this with the HP Microserver, and couldn't believe that some modern NIC's just don't have a simple WOL mode that is hardcoded, and it needs an OS to correctly set it up..

Skidilliplop · 31 Mar 2011 at 11:56

That's rather crappy?

I only really ever use higher end Broadcom/Intel NICs in builds so i apologise for not being aware that not all cards did this in hardware.
Most of the Dell small form factor boxes I've been rolling out the last 3-4 years do it whether a disk is installed or not (if the PC is connected with mains you can see the switch port active at 10/half when WOL is enabled in the BIOS). But then they do use Broadcom 57xx chipsets where a lot of consumer motherboards use cheapo realtek ones.

Demon · 31 Mar 2011 at 14:57

Skidilliplop said:
That's rather crappy?

I only really ever use higher end Broadcom/Intel NICs in builds so i apologise for not being aware that not all cards did this in hardware.
Most of the Dell small form factor boxes I've been rolling out the last 3-4 years do it whether a disk is installed or not (if the PC is connected with mains you can see the switch port active at 10/half when WOL is enabled in the BIOS). But then they do use Broadcom 57xx chipsets where a lot of consumer motherboards use cheapo realtek ones.

I'm with you, it's so amazingly odd in this day and age..

The HP Microserver uses a reasonable (well I say reasonable, it doesn't have OS independant WOL!) NC107i , which is just a Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5723..

Go figure.. and it can really cause no end of confusion..