Enabling Wake on LAN (WoL) on a Dell PC with a Realtek PCIe GBE NIC

Computers that support the Wake-on-LAN (WoL or WOL) standard can be awoken from a sleep state by sending a "magic packet" to their network card from another system. For an Ethernet card, the packet is an Ethernet frame that is sent to all systems on the local area network (LAN). The packet contains 6 bytes of the hexadecimal value FF followed by 16 repetitions of the 48-bit media access control (MAC) address of the system to be awakened from a sleep state. I tried unsuccessfully on Friday to remotely "wake" a Dell PC from another PC by connecting to the other PC on the same LAN and then sending a magic packet to the sleeping computer using the Wake-on-LAN program from www.matcode.com—I no longer see a download link for the free software for Windows systems on the developer's website, but you can download it from a snapshot of the site taken by the Wayback Machine on December 19, 2007 at Wake-on-LAN where you can also find the utility MCGETMAC.EXE that will allow you to obtain the MAC address for a network interface card (NIC) on another computer, or you can download WakeMeOnLan, another free program for Windows systems created by Nir Sofer. After the user powered on her Dell computer this morning and left the office, I connected to her system remotely to verify that the system is configured to respond to a magic packet to wake it when it is sleeping.

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Configuring a Windows Vista system for WOL

To configure Microsoft Windows Vista for Wake-on-LAN support, i.e., to allow it to be "awakened" by sending a specific Ethernet packet to it, take the following steps:

1. Click on Start.
2. Select Control Panel.
3. Select Network and Internet.
4. Click on Network and Sharing Center.
5. Click on Manage network connections.
6. Right-click on Local Area Connection and choose Properties.
7. Click on the Configure button to configure your Network Interface Card ( NIC).
8. Click on the Power Management tab.
9. Click on Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power, which will then allow you to put a checkmark in the box for Allow this device to wake the computer.
10. Click on OK

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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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Wake On LAN using mc-wol

I needed to share an Outlook user's calendar with someone else in her office. I had expected to be able to remotely log into her system to configure Outlook to share her calendar. But when I attempted to log into her system at 9:30 P.M., I found it was inaccessible. I then remembered that she always turns her system off when she leaves. I didn't want to spend 1/2 driving to her office to make a change I could complete in less than 10 minutes and then have to spend another 1/2 hour driving back home.

Fortunately, I had selected the option to have Dell preconfigure the system for Wake On Lan (WOL) support in the BIOS when her company purchased the system. Wake On Lan support allows one to restart a computer that has been shut down by sending a "Magic Packet" to the Media Access Control (MAC) address of the network card in a computer to "wakeup" the computer, i.e. power on and boot up the computer.

This can occur when the system is still providing power to the Ethernet controller in the system. Most modern computers with a network connection provided through the motherboard support this functionality. The functionality is also present in motherboards that support the PCI 2.2 standard when a PCI 2.2 network adapter is used. In other cases, when WOL support is provided through the motherboard, the motherboard must have a WAKEUP-LINK header onboard and connected to the network card via a special 3-pin cable. Wake on LAN must also be enabled in the Power Management section of the systems's BIOS. It may also be necessary to configure the computer to reserve power for the network card when the system is shut down.

To wake a shut down system, you need a program that can send the Magic Packet to the MAC address of the target system. You also need to know the MAC address of the target system. In this case I use Norton Ghost to backup the systems on the LAN and Norton Ghost provided me with the MAC address.

There are quite a few free programs that provide WOL capabilities. You can find many listed in the Wikipedia Wake-on-Lan article on the topic. I used the free utility provided by MATCODE at http://www.matcode.com/wol.htm.

To use the MATCODe WOL utility, mc-wol.exe, you simply download the utility and then run it with mc-wol <MAC Address>, e.g. as shown below.

C:\Program Files\Network\WOL>mc-wol 00:13:72:3B:4A:B6

WakeOnLAN v1.0 Copyright (c)2001, MATCODE Software.
Web: http://www.matcode.com
Author: Vitaly Evseenko, ve@matcode.com
Sending "Magic Packet" to 00:13:72:3b:4a:b6 - Success!

Once I ran the program, I was able to ping the IP address of the target system shortly afterwards to verify the system was back up.

If you need to obtain the MAC address of a system you can ping it and then look in the ARP table on the system from which you ran the ping, with arp -a to find the relevant entry. Or you can use the MATCODE, MCGETMAC.EXE utility available from the same URL as the MC-WOL.EXE utility or from the links listed below.

C:\Program Files\Network\WOL>mcgetmac 192.168.0.15

Get MAC v1.0 Copyright (c)2001, MATCODE Software.
Web: http://www.matcode.com
Author: Vitaly Evseenko, ve@matcode.com

Name: js.example.com
IP address: 192.168.0.15
Ethernet MAC address: 00:13:72:3B:4A:B6

Press any key ...

References:

1. Wake-On-Lan
   MATCODE
2. Wake-on-LAN
   Wikipedia
3. MAC address
   Wikipedia
4. Conventional PCI 2.2
   PCI-SIG

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