Dell Precision 380 WOL

I needed to set up a Dell Precision 380 for Wake on LAN (WOL) support. To check the network adapter's support for the feature within Windows, you can take the following steps.

1. Click on Start.
2. Click on Settings (This step doesn't apply under Windows Vista).
3. Select Control Panel.
4. Double-click on System.
5. Click on the Hardware tab (This step doesn't apply under Windows Vista).
6. Click on Device Manager.
7. Click on the "+" to the left of Network Adapters
8. Select the relevant network adapter by right-clicking on it and choosing Properties.
9. Click on the Advanced tab.

In this case the system has a Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller. I clicked on Wake Up Capabilities and saw the value was "Both" meaning it supports a wakeup call using a "Magic Packet " or a "Wake Up Frame". I then clicked on the Power Management tab. "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" was not checked, so I didn't need to worry about "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" being unchecked.

You also need to set the system's BIOS to support WOL. To do so, take the following steps, which are specific to the Dell Precision 380's BIOS.

1. Reboot the system and, as soon as the system begings to reboot, hit the F2 key to go into the BIOS Setup.
2. Use the cursor key to go down to Power Management and hit the Enter key to view the options within it.
3. Go down to "Remote Wake Up" and hit the Enter key.
4. Use the right cursor key to move to the On button, which should turn green. The factory default setting is Off.
5. Hit the Enter key.
6. Hit the Esc key to exit Setup.
7. Use the tab or right cursor key to choose Save/Exit and hit the Enter key to reboot.

Before the system boots, you can power it off and, from another system, use a program that can send a magic packet to the system, such as mc-wol to wake it up.

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