Wake on LAN stopped working after a long time with no problems.

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Ivan Ivanov

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Apr 28, 2009
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Hi All

I tried everything I could think of, and I couldn't find anyone on the net who had my specific problem.

Let me first describe my setup:
The WOL target PC has WOL capable motherboard where WOL is enabled by default (no setting in the BIOS). It's running Windows 10 and Ubuntu which I rarely use. My router is NETGEAR R7000 with dd-wrt installed and working OK.

I have two WOL triggers: An old laptop running Debian, which I use as a home server, and it's always on. When I want wake the "big" PC when I'm away, I remote-access the laptop, and since it has access to the internal network I can send the magic packet using <wakeonlan> bash command.

The other WOL trigger is my phone, I have an app on it for that purpose, also working only when connected to the local network via wi-fi. I rarely use that one...

Everything was and still IS set up correctly and worked fine up until a month ago.

So one day I tried to boot into Ubuntu and found it won't boot, so I reinstalled it. I fixed GRUB so that windows is visible again as a boot option and made it the default boot option. After that everything worked fine, both windows and linux, except the PC won't WOL?!

I don't see how that can be the cause?! I mentioned that for completeness but I'm more convinced it's just a coincidence and a much more likely cause is a windows update. In fact while troubleshooting I noticed that "Wake on magic packet" and "Wake on Pattern" entries are gone from the network adapter's driver properties dialog...

Using WOL sniffers I was able to confirm that the magic packets do arrive to the target PC from both sources (triggers). And the magic packets are the correct format and the right mac address. (there is no reason the mac to be wrong since I didn't change anything...)

I looked at the back of the target PC when it's off to confirm that the on-board network adapter is on and receiving network traffic. the green LED was blinking irregularly showing traffic does arrive to the adapter...

I hope I described everything well and thank you all in advance. :)
 
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Well you have done everything I normally suggest to people including running packet captures.

I really wish microsoft did not have to reinvent everything. They have so many silly power saving and boot options. The BIOS manufactures unfortunately have included some of the support which makes normal WoL not work.

WoL is a BIOS option, it really should not matter what any driver options exist. The driver is not running until after the OS is booted and the computer when it is shutdown even a lot of the bios is not running. We used to network boot racks of lab computers with wol and pretty much the OS was changed all the time so any options in the OS should be meaningless.

From what I can tell the bios manufactures allow the OS to...
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bill001g

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Well you have done everything I normally suggest to people including running packet captures.

I really wish microsoft did not have to reinvent everything. They have so many silly power saving and boot options. The BIOS manufactures unfortunately have included some of the support which makes normal WoL not work.

WoL is a BIOS option, it really should not matter what any driver options exist. The driver is not running until after the OS is booted and the computer when it is shutdown even a lot of the bios is not running. We used to network boot racks of lab computers with wol and pretty much the OS was changed all the time so any options in the OS should be meaningless.

From what I can tell the bios manufactures allow the OS to set BIOS options from the OS rather than you set them in a bios screen.

Not sure what to suggest, every WoL machine I have seen has BIOS options. Maybe reset the cmos on the motherboard. We used to use WoL a lot but now almost all servers have small dedicated out of band management that you can do remote boot and more so I have not used WoL as much.
 
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Ivan Ivanov

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Apr 28, 2009
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Hi bill001g


Yes that's clearly the case, but after going through many "solutions" of WoL problems that all involve tinkering with windows and the network adapter driver settings I kind of started thinking it might have something to do with it...
And yes many of those solutions involved disabling the "turn off the network adapter to save power" option tn the driver settings.


That's a good idea. It's a simple thing, how didn't I thought of it. XD
I'm going to try it when I get back from work. I'll write on the results.


I actually considered another solution myself. A bit more radical, maybe similar to what you're using. Since I have a server that runs all the time, I thought I could connect a small USB module to that server and use it to control a realy or something in place of the power button. Than, through a program running on the server (that I'll write myself) I could power on or off the PC without using WoL at all.
 
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bill001g

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They make what is called power distribution units that you can remote power on. The ones we used were very expensive rack mount things but they sell much cheaper units that look like fancy power strips. Many have ethernet ports. The bios boot on power restore option seems to always work.
 
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Ivan Ivanov

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Hi bill001g

Unfortunately the 'reset CMOS' didn't help. I'm staring to think there's something broken in my board. I'm going to use the other method to turn on my computer... But thanks for you suggestion anyway.
 
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Ivan Ivanov

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Apr 28, 2009
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Hi All

I'd like to share with you all the latest development on my attempts to restore the WoL function of my desctop PC.
The short version is: I had success but my happiness was short lived. After what I did I was able to to turn on my computer through WoL only once!

OK this is what I did: After reading this tutorial on wake on lan (https://lifehacker.com/348197/access-your-computer-anytime-and-save-energy-with-wake-on-lan) I figured that the operating system and network adapter's driver are not so unrelated to wake on lan function. They have a lot of say whether the function will work or not. Apparently the OS and driver set things into the adapter driver (or BIOS) that changes it's behavior.

So I did what the tutorial says and it didn't work, but since the driver of my network adapter driver didn't have a crucial function that the tutorial required (namely 'Wake from Shutdown' in the Advanced tab of driver's properties dialog) I figured that my driver needs changing.

The driver I had, was from 2016. I checked my network adapter's manufacturer for latest driver and it turned out the latest is from 2018, from a month ago :O. Big difference, it seems Microsoft doesn't update their driver databases very often.

So I installed the new driver and as you might imagine the driver's Properties dialog in the device manager had a "truck-load" of new options, many of with related to wake on lan. I tried to wake my PC like that with no changes - didn't work.

The driver had no less than five check-boxes related WoL. They're as follow:
Wake on magic packet;
Wake on pattern;
Wake from shutdown state;
Wake on link;
(There was one more I can't recall now.)

All of the were checked except the 'Wake on link'

I checked it and shut down my PC. I tried to wake it through my phone, and... Oh Miracle the computer turns on! I tried one more time, AND... Yeah, didn't work. That with on changes to any settings from the first time. All subsequent attempts didn't work either. From both laptop an phone.

That's about all I'm willing to do on this mater. It seems I 'm not going to get to use WoL...

Anyway I just wanted to share my experience with you guys...
 
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