In my previous post we discussed the uses, applications and advantages of auto starting and shutting down PCs. In this post we will discuss how can this be achieved in multiple ways.
Lets split the problem statement in two parts.
PART 1 - Starting/Booting a Laptop / PC Remotely
A quick google search will give you multiple solutions for booting your machine. The most popular and easiest solution involved is using LAN connectivity and capabilities of the Ethernet card / motherboard and the broadband router. All the latest PCs / Laptop have the necessary hardware to support this functionality. It just needs to be correctly configured. This method is referred to as Wake-on-LAN or WoL in networking parlance.
1. Enable Wake-on-LAN or Wake on PCI card capability in BIOS settings of your motherboard. Usually this setting is found in the PnP/PCi configuration or Power Settings option in BIOS settings.
2. Enable WoL capability via your LAN / network card settings. A typical setting for a gigabit network card looks like this:
3. Once the above two steps are done, the Laptop/Desktop is pretty much ready to be woken up remotely! Now we login to any other PC on the same network and use something called as a magic packet to broadcast over the network and boot the PC. There are multiple magic packet generators available online. One which I use regularly is this one by Depicus. It asks for the LAN Card MAC address of the PC to be woken up, its IP address, subnet mask and remote port number ( usually 9). It also asks for send options Internet or Local Subnet. A Snapshot from WoL GUI tool looks as below.
Enter all the details in the fields and Press Wake Me Up Button. Voila! the remote PC begins to boot.
There are other command line utilities too that can generate and send magic packets. They are specially useful when you want to automate the task of waking up PCs remotely by writing scripts. One which I use from the same author can be found here.
In the next post we will discuss how to Wake on LAN using Mobile Phones and also booting PC from the internet (outside local subnet).