Wake On LAN?

I do remote wake up everyday at work and from work to home over internet, so I know how it works (or I thought)

But on L702X,

- Magic packet program I use everyday doesn't work.
- There's no options in BIOS
- In Win7, set NIC properties to allow wakeup, enable SNMP, and try to wake from sleep, not working
- Enable firewall UDP port 9, nothing.
- Google, discussion everywhere but no definite answers.

Anything else I can look into? Thanks

 

Anyone? Is this possible at all?

 

Have you checked this site? Following the steps there worked for a L502x user, which also doesn't inlclude a BIOS setting.

Windows 7 Issues: Wake-on-Lan (WOL) for Windows 7 Made Easy!

 

Thanks. I tried everything there except there's no WOL option in Dell XPS BIOS.

Actually, it should have nothing to do with Windows, TCP/IP, SNMP, etc. The only matters is BIOS and the magic packets, but there's no BIOS here.

Anyone? No one ever tried to wake up an XPS

 

Sorry to hear it, the info at that page seemed promising. It was originally mentioned by L502x owner who got it working. According to the post I read, the L502x also lacks a BIOS WOL setting. He does mention it can wake from sleep but not hibernate. You can read it here:

Dell XPS l502x and Wake on LAN feature - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community



Have you tried the packet sniffer util to make sure that packets are getting through?


Have you tried taking the firewall down altogether and testing it? I've had more than one instance where I thought I'd configured the firewall correctly, and still the thing didn't work until I turned it off altogether. If it works with the firewall down, put it back up, try again, then examine the firewall logs to see what was really being blocked.


You probably don't want to leave the firewall down for an extended period while you go off-site for testing. Have you tried to wake it on the local LAN? If you can, you'd know to focus on the router.

 

That makes sense, because in hibernation the computer is in fact off. It's just that the contents of RAM were written to the HD before the computer shut down. As the computer is entirely off, it can't listen for any events on the LAN.

 

Thanks for the follow up. But I don't think any of those articles make any sense and/or those people understand what it is to begin with.

WOL is about waking up a machine from completely powered off state by broadcasting MAC address 16 times. It has nothing to do with operating system and will not work with a sleep/hibernate machine (you maybe able to do that but that's not WOL). I use it everyday at work.

It would be ridiculous if such an old technology does not work on the latest and brightest of DELL.

Anyone? Anyone?

 

I recall that when I installed a PCI Ethernet card years ago, there was a special extra cable/connector that had to be installed in order to use Wake on LAN. The Ethernet card was fully functional without that cable, but Wake on LAN would not work without it. I wonder if that is built into Ethernet chips on current systems, or not.

 

Not sure about earlier years, today there's nothing special. Just broadcast FFFFFFFFFFF and then MAC address 16 times, whoever has that address will wake up. The only remaining point is how far your broadcast message can go. I have done that on LAN, across multiple segments, via VPN and even from work, through firewall, across Internet, relay on my home router and wake up my home PC.

But I just can't make it happen sitting next to an XPS. Is this an option at all?

 

interesting, my old HP laptop also had no bios support for it but rather it had to be turned on in device manager for the WOL to function.
by checking "Allow this device to wake the computer" and "Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer" under the gigabit lan (not the wireless lan.)
only works when a lan cable is attached to it though (could never get the wake on wireless lan function to work)

 

Tried this on mine last night from a desktop on my home LAN, no luck. I tried from completely powered off, not from sleep.

Turned on logging in Windows Firewall on the L702x, and nothing was recorded. I'm not a network guy, so maybe this is normal. From what I read, WOL works at OSI layer 2 and Windows Firewall works at layer3.

Maybe I'll try a packet sniffer tonight if I have time. I think the first step in step in troubleshooting is to verify the packets are really getting there, if they are not, all else is moot.

I tried a couple different WOL programs. One was an old AMD utility that actually did network discovery, the other was a simple gui based program that can't save the MACs you enter.

What program do you use to send the magic packet?


Also, in case you are interested and adventurous, Realtek has newer drivers than Dell, as well as network diag tools:


[/br]RTL8111C/RTL8111CP/RTL8111D(L)
RTL8168C/RTL8111DP/RTL8111E
RTL8168E/RTL8111F]Realtek

 

I tested last night using this sniffer
Depicus Wake on Lan Monitor/Sniffer

and this program to send the magic packet
Depicus Windows Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The sniffer revealed that the previous utility I had been using, an older AMD utility, did not send the packet. Maybe I had it configured incorrectly. The utility listed above did work correctly and the packet was detected by the sniffer. It's a Windows app, so I thought perhaps I'd need to open the firewall, but it worked without any changes to the firewall.

EDIT: I'm testing some more at work this morning, and I realized that I was prompted to create a firewall exception when I started the sniffer.

The sending machine was a desktop with a wireless connection to my home router, the L702x was connected to the same router via ethernet.

I configured the L702x Realtek LOM to accept magic packets in Device manager properties. There were four properties with Wake on Lan in their name, I set them all on.

Put the L702x to sleep in Windows.

Sent the magic packet from the desktop, the L702x woke up.

Powered off the L702x.

Sent the magic packet, the L702x did NOT wake up.

I suppose that when the L702x is powered off power is cut to all circuitry, including the LOM.

 

Exactly. Even back when I used this on desktops, I believe the desktops had to be in sleep/standby for this to work. If a computer is shut down, all power is off and there is no circuitry active that could detect an incoming signals.

Thanks for sharing these results. Someone may find it useful to know that Wake on LAN can be used with XPS laptops when they are in sleep/standby.

 

Actually, just tried it on a modern desktop (Optiplex 380), and it does in fact wake the PC from a Windows shut down. This machine has power to the motherboard after Windows is shut down, you can see a couple LEDs still lit. The only way to completely power off the motherboard is to unplug the PC. I've worked with desktop with this characteristic going back 12-15 years I'd guess.

I think that may the difference with the L702x, it might not have power to the motherboard and LOM when the Windows is shut down. Maybe to save the battery, but I suppose there no reason to not leave the mb powered up when the AC adapter is connected.

Also, had to make two changes in the Power Management section of the Opti BIOS. In addition to enabling WOL, I also had to disable Low Power Mode. When enabled, the integrated LOM is disabled when powered off.

 

I think that laptops in general are meant to be entirely powered off when shut down. That's to prevent unintended battery discharge and prevent the "hot laptop in a bag" condition.