Wake on LAN acting like a 5-year-old! Behave!

[Volatus]

Hey,

I'm having a major problem with a server I'm working on. It's supposed to be able to be fully remote managed - able to turn off and on remotely. I have the "turn off" part figured - I just use Task Manager within remote desktop to turn off the computer. Turning on, though, is another problem. I have a router that can send WOL packets within the LAN, so that's no problem, it works perfectly every time since it already knows the MAC and IPs of the computers. The server is actually using a real dual-CPU server board - although a rather old one.

I could trigger WOL only when the computer was shut down before Windows booted, or "crash-shut-down" by holding the Power button down. Whenever Windows shut off cleanly, WOL wouldn't work.

The problem is, even though the integrated network controller is WOL capable, and always stays on (connected) with the system powered off, Windows somehow convinces the BIOS to ignore the WOL packets and stay off. Windows doesn't believe the card is WOL capable, so it doesn't even provide me with a "Power Management" tab, even though the card is identified by its driver as "Intel 82558-based Integrated Ethernet with Wake on LAN". I try installing Intel's PRO network drivers, which was an exercise in futility... first, it said no compatible devices were installed... then when I "force" installed it by using "Update Driver", it finally installed properly. But the Intel power management tab claimed "this port is not wake-on-lan compatible" (or something like that). It's obvious where the problem lies...

To trick Windows into not disabling WOL on shutdown, I installed a shiny new Zyxel GN650T gigabit card in the server (an old N440BX board), which DOES have a "power management" tab and "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby". I didn't connect it to the LAN though, since I didn't have a WOL cable to connect it to the board. The two ports (the onboard LAN wake-on-lan, and the "external" header) were connected together so I knew Windows couldn't care less about where the signal came from. It worked - I tested it in Hibernate, which wasn't working with WOL before, and I was able to wake the computer up from the router. Success! Right?

Not really - I was both out a perfectly good gigabit card, and I later found that shutting down the computer remotely, again, left me with a bricked computer. Okay, now what? If I resume the computer from Hibernate, some of my hardware doesn't work properly (specifically, its TV tuner card locks the computer up when I try to use it - as one mod will remember from my last thread). So I now have to hibernate to turn off the computer, then to turn it back on, I WOL it, then reboot it. Kinda messy, just to beat around Windows' irritating BIOS manipulation!

Is there a registry tweak I'm not aware of? I've exhausted all my Google possibilities... everyone seems to want WOL to STOP turning their computer back on, but that's the opposite of what I want...

[Mijzelf]

My 'NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller' has an 'Advanced' tab in Device Manager->Properties, where I can enable 'WakeOnLAN From PowerOff'. I never tried it, though.

[dubsdj]

Steal a NIC from another PC and install it on your Sever, see if you get better results. I had a similar problem too and I ended up just putting a different network card in the computer and it worked after that.

I also experienced the problem with the PC instantly switching itself on when I shut it down because of a rogue wake up packet.. I just changed the NIC and it was fine after that.

The Intel ones seem to work best for me..

[dubsdj]

Oh and I also found that onboard NIC's also didnt often work so well with WOL

And the guy above me also mentioned about enabling "allow this device to wake up the PC" Im sure u already have done this but if you haven't then try that also