How to detect if hardware is Wake-on-LAN able ? network card or BIOS feature?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Camille Petersen
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Camille Petersen

Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find out if the hardware
supports Wake-on-lan?

Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the network card?

Camille
 
Camille Petersen said:
Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find
out if the hardware
supports Wake-on-lan?

Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the
network card?

Camille
Click to expand...

Both, depending on where your NIC is. If it's an onboard NIC, the primary
settings are in BIOS, even though there may be the same settings in the NIC
properties. If it's an add-in NIC, the primary settings will be in the
card's properties, and the BIOS settings will probably have no affect on
those settings.
 
Camille Petersen said:
Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find
out if the hardware
supports Wake-on-lan?

Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the
network card?

Camille
Click to expand...

Both, depending on where your NIC is. If it's an onboard NIC, the primary
settings are in BIOS, even though there may be the same settings in the NIC
properties. If it's an add-in NIC, the primary settings will be in the
card's properties, and the BIOS settings will probably have no affect on
those settings.
 
Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find out if the hardware
supports Wake-on-lan?

Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the network card?

Camille
Click to expand...

Usually if you go to the driver properties of the network card there
is an advanced tab and it may detail there the capabilities.

- Thee Chicago Wolf [MVP]
 
The Network Adapter *and* the motherboard must both allow this. If the
computer is ACPI compliant it is WOL capable, look in the "Computer"
section of the Device Manager to see if the computer is ACPI compliant.

If the computer is ACPI compliant then you can verify if there are WOL
settings for the network adapter via the connection properties in the
Network Connections panel (look in "Configure" details for the adapter).
If you don't see anything in the settings for the adapter you can get
the latest drivers for the adapter and see if things change. On most
machines if the network adapter is WOL capable and enabled you will see
an indicator light that stays lit on the adapter when the computer is
turned off, to allow WOL the network adapter needs a constant source of
power. If the indicator light on the network adapter doesn't show when
the computer is turned off check the BIOS and make sure that WOL is enabled.

John
 
Camille said:
Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find out if the hardware
supports Wake-on-lan?

Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the network card?

Camille
Click to expand...

These are the ingredients for Wake on LAN. We'll start
with the physical layer first.

*******

On older computers, there used to be a WOL header on the motherboard. You
would add a NIC card to a PCI slot, then run a three wire cable from the
NIC card WOL header, to the motherboard WOL header.

Newer systems use a different scheme. The WOL header is gone. A signal
called PME on the PCI bus, is available for hardware seeking to wake
the computer. You can buy NIC cards compatible with this "PME on PCI" scheme,
and when doing so, the three wire cable is no longer needed.

Generally, those two schemes are mutually exclusive. You wouldn't mix a
NIC card with three pin WOL header, with a modern motherboard, because
the card may not be driving the PME signal on the PCI bus.

*******

In the BIOS, you go to the power management setting, and enable
"Wake on PME". PME stands for Power Management Event. It is basically
an interrupt of sorts, to wake the computer. PCI Express may have
its own wake up signal, with a different name. It would be in the same
BIOS setup page as the Wake on PME.

*******

Next, comes the NIC specific settings. Go to the Device Manager.

Do "Properties" on the NIC device. Look at the Power Management tab.
Enable the setting:

"Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby"

That allows waking as long as standby voltage is present on the NIC chip.

Then, under the Advanced tab, look for a setting with "Wake" in the name.
Each NIC could be different. My current NIC says "Wake up Type" for
example. One of the menu options for "Wake Up Type" is "Magic Packet",
which would be the classical wakeup mechanism.

On the one hand, looking at the Advanced Tab would seem to tell you
what you seek to know. But if the rest of the infrastructure isn't
enabled, it isn't going to work.

When the computer is in Standby, you should see a LED glowing on the
NIC interface connector. Some NIC connectors are cheap enough, they
have no visual indicators at all. If there are LEDs present, they
give you a quick confirmation that the NIC card (or built-in NIC
chip) has a standby voltage source. If you see no evidence the NIC
interface is powered, when in standby, that is going to severely
reduce the odds of it waking up.

Paul
 
Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find out if the hardware
supports Wake-on-lan?

Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the network card?

Camille
Click to expand...

Do this on the system in question:

To eliminate questions and guessing, please provide additional
information about your system.

Click Start, Run and in the box enter:

msinfo32

Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste the information back here.

There will be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name), and whatever appears to be private information to you, just
delete it from the pasted information.
 
Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find out if the hardware
supports Wake-on-lan?

Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the network card?

Camille
Click to expand...

To eliminate questions and guessing, please provide additional
information about your system.

Click Start, Run and in the box enter:

msinfo32

Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste the information back here.

There will be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name), and whatever appears to be private information to you, just
delete it from the pasted information.
 
Paul said:
Camille Petersen wrote:
> Assume I am sitting in front of a computer (from a friend). How can I find out if the hardware
> supports Wake-on-lan?
>
> Is this feature dependent from the BIOS of the motherboard or from the network card?
>
> Camille
>

The explanation from "Paul" above was very helpful. Thanks, Paul.
Josias
Click to expand...
 
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