How to Send a Wake on LAN in Windows

Conserve power by using wake-on-LAN in windows.

Wake-on-LAN is an Ethernet standard that allows for computers to be turned on or brought out of sleep, hibernation or standby by sending a specially formatted data packet, called the "magic packet," to a single PC or group of computers. Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 can be configured to send wake on LAN packets. In order for target computers to respond to wake-on-LAN packets, the computer's BIOS must support and be configured for wake-on-LAN.

Things You'll Need

• Computer with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 software installed

Instructions

1. Configure Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 for wake-on-LAN. Click the Windows "Start" button and then click "Programs." Click "System Center Operations Manager" from the displayed program window. The System Center Operations Manager 2007 console will open.

2. Open the site properties window. Click the site that contains the computers to send wake-on-LAN packets to under "Computers" in the left pane of the System Center Operations Manager console. The "Site Properties" window will be displayed.

3. Click the "Wake-on-LAN" tab in the Site Properties window. The Wake-on-LAN tab will display wake-on-LAN configuration options

4. Enable wake-on-LAN for the site. Check the "Enable Wake-on-LAN for this site" box to enable wake-on-LAN for the computers belonging to the site.

5. Select which type of wake-on-LAN packets to send. Check the "Use power on commands only" box and specify what scheduled activities will prompt the sending of power on wake-on-LAN packets. Check the "Use wake-up only" box and specify what scheduled activities will prompt the sending of "wake-up only" packets.

6. Select method of sending packets. Check the "Subnet-directed broadcasts" box if you would like to send wake-on-LAN packets to all computers in the site. Check the "Unicast" if you would like to send wake-on-LAN packets to only one computer.

7. Access the Wake-on-LAN advanced properties. Click on the "Advanced" button in the "Wake-on-LAN" tab's window. The "Wake-on-LAN Advanced Properties" dialog box will open.

8. Configure the number of retries that will be performed when sending wake-on-LAN packets by entering the desired number of retries in the Wake-on-LAN Advanced Properties dialog box.

9. Configure the delay between the sending of wake-on-LAN retry packets by entering the time delay in the Wake-on-LAN Advanced Properties dialog box.

10. Exit the site properties Wake-on-LAN configuration window. Click "OK" in the Wake-on-LAN Advanced Properties dialog box and then click "OK" in the Wake-on-LAN tab. The wake-on-LAN settings are now saved. Wake-on-LAN packets will now be sent to computers belonging to the selected site based on the scheduled activities that were configured to prompt the sending of wake-on-LAN packets in Step 5.

References

• Microsoft: How to Configure Wake On LAN Advanced Options
• Microsoft: How to Configure Wake On LAN Activities
• Microsoft: Example Scenarios for Implementing Wake On LAN