Remote Wake-Up and Wake on LAN*

The ability to remotely wake computers is an important development in computer management. This feature has evolved over the last few years from a simple remote power-on capability to a complex system interacting with a variety of device and operating system (OS) power states. More details are available here.

NOTE: The Intel® PRO/1000 MT Quad Port Server Adapter does not support Wake on LAN* (WoL) operations.

Microsoft* Windows* Products

Microsoft* Windows* 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server* 2003 are ACPI-capable. These operating systems do not support wake from S5 state, only from standby. When shutting down the system, they shutdown ACPI devices including the Intel PRO adapters. This disarms the adapters remote wake up capability. However, in some ACPI-capable computers, the BIOS may have a setting that allows you to override the OS and wake from an S5 state anyway. If there is no support for wake from S5 state in your BIOS settings, you are limited to Wake From Standby when using these operating systems in ACPI computers.

For some adapters, the advanced tab in Intel® PROSet includes a setting called Enable PME. To explicitly allow wake up with a Magic Packet from shutdown under APM power management mode, set this to Enable.

In ACPI-capable versions of Windows, the Intel PROSet advanced settings also include a setting called Wake on Settings. This controls the type of packets that wake up the system from standby.

In ACPI computers running ACPI-aware operating systems, make sure the wake on standby option is enabled. To enable wake on standby, open the Device Manager and then navigate to the adapter properties Power Management tab. Check the setting “Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby”.

Other Operating Systems

In operating systems that do not support remote wake-up technology, you can still use the Magic Packet method to power-up a computer remotely. When the computer is first powered on, the Intel® Boot Agent configuration utility can be invoked when the Boot Agent prompt appears on the screen. The configuration program has a parameter setting titled Legacy OS Wakeup Support. If this setting is enabled, the Boot Agent will pre-condition the adapter to respond to a Magic Packet wake up event. This allows remote wake-up in operating systems that do not support it. In early versions of the PRO/100+ Management adapter, this setting will not appear and is not needed.


Last modified on 11/30/05 10:38p Revision 6