Hello,

I'm leaving for vacation in a month and a half, and I had a great idea just yesterday.

I recently got streaming to work from my PC to my iPad. I can wirelessly stream any content in any folder over the network from my PC to my iPad with on-the-fly conversion of video, so I don't have to download the actual file to my iPad. I can even turn off my PC when I'm done streaming without having to get out of bed and walk the 10 feet across the room, which is nice. Smile

Here's my idea. Is there a way I can remotely turn on my PC from anywhere? I've looked into Wake On LAN, and it seemed pretty promising, but it doesn't work.

I can't boot my PC from a powered off state using a WOL app on my iPad, even when I have "Allow this device to wake the computer" and "Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer" checked in my Intel 82583V Gigabit Network properties.

I've poked around alot online, and I've seen people have very similar issues, except they could wake up from a sleep state, not a complete power off.

My motherboard for my PC I want to remotely boot is an ASRock 990FX Extreme9 (I'm an AMD junkie)


Does anyone have experience in setting such a system up? Is this even possible?
Well, for what it's worth. A complete power off is not the same as being put to sleep. The computer still listens for input while it is asleep so it knows when to wake up, this isn't the case while it's off. I'm not the most versed when it comes to these things but I believe this isn't possible.

Is there a reason why you don't want to leave your computer in sleep mode?
I don't really want to leave it even in a sleep state because I'll be gone from home (home in Vermont) and I'll be on Chincoteague Island (Virginia) for 10 days.

If I have to go through wake/sleep cycles though, I think I can manage something.
It is possible to keep the NIC on when the computer is fully powered off, but it may require you to change a setting on the BIOS. I don't remember what that setting was, but it may be something like "power on PCI devices" or even just "Wake on LAN". And even after turning those on, there may be something in the driver settings about WOL:


And then on top of that, you may even have to fiddle with Windows's own power management:


Yes, it's hard. Make sure your NIC drivers are up-to-date, at least.
Thanks oldmud0, I will certainly look at this tonight. I may need to get an actual NIC, but I'm planning on making a home server for backup/data transfer/MASSIVE storage, so it would be a decent investment.


If anyone else has other things to add, please do so! I do appreciate you guy's help!
Most PCs have a network card for Ethernet, even if it is part of the motherboard. Are you sure your computer doesn't have a NIC?
I did set power PCI devices in the BIOS, and even when off, the ethernet port does light up with those green and orange LEDs.

I tried installing drivers for the network thing, but the installer said there weren't any devices detected. Thats not really true, because my PC is connected to the internet via an ethernet cable, and it works fine.

Do I need a NIC, not just the mobo ethernet port?




Note that I tried putting the PC to sleep (not shutdown) and waking it from my iPad and iPhone. I have the MAC address and IP right, but then I realized that I didn't really know what port to use. One app defaulted to 9, another defaulted to 5000. Do I need to add an exception in firewall or something or open a port? What port do I use to send the wake signal?

Also, do I need to config the router at all? Like add a port exception? I actually tried logging onto my router via a phone and waking it from LAN there, but nothing happened still.

I feel like it shouldn't be this hard.
theprogrammingcube wrote:
I did set power PCI devices in the BIOS, and even when off, the ethernet port does light up with those green and orange LEDs.

I tried installing drivers for the network thing, but the installer said there weren't any devices detected. Thats not really true, because my PC is connected to the internet via an ethernet cable, and it works fine.

Do I need a NIC, not just the mobo ethernet port?

Note that I tried putting the PC to sleep (not shutdown) and waking it from my iPad and iPhone. I have the MAC address and IP right, but then I realized that I didn't really know what port to use. One app defaulted to 9, another defaulted to 5000. Do I need to add an exception in firewall or something or open a port? What port do I use to send the wake signal?

Also, do I need to config the router at all? Like add a port exception? I actually tried logging onto my router via a phone and waking it from LAN there, but nothing happened still.

I feel like it shouldn't be this hard.


Yes, you'll have to forward ports if you're doing it from WAN. I suggest not opening port 9 from the WAN, and instead listening at some arbitrary port (5000), which would then forward to port 9 on your computer.

It shouldn't strictly matter which port you use since the NIC is just listening for the magic packet, not which port it comes from.

You don't need a dedicated NIC. The Ethernet on your motherboard already counts as a NIC. Also, since the lights on your NIC seem to be on after the computer is off, it shows that the your NIC indeed seems to be left on after the computer is shut down, which is a good sign that it's ready to receive WOL packets.

Try Netscan, which will scan where your computer is and will let you send it a WOL packet somewhere in one of the menus. Usually, WOL packets are sent to the broadcast address (e.g. 192.168.1.255), but I think you are able to send it to a specific IP address as well.
I got it working, and I had it in time for vacation! Here's what I did:

I reflashed the router firmware and set it to defaults. Amazingly, wake on land worked just fine! Also, the remote login worked perfectly after this, too! I immediately called up my best friend who lives in NY (I'm in VT) and walked him through remotely accessing my router and waking it from lan there. It worked flawlessly! On to my final setup.

I set in my pc bios to restart on power loss. I then moved the pc cord to a wall socket directly, so the automatic surge protector in the outlet board wouldn't interfere powering back on. I have an asrock board, so I have an asrock utility to log on my user automatically on the login screen. I then had my media server start up on log in, as well as chrome. Chrome auto starts gmail, which I can use to log if my ip had changed on the power off (I don't have a static ip). I'd just use gmails ip logging to see the last login, and that's my home routers ip.

All went well. When we got to the beach house, I got on the wifi and woke my pc using my iPad, all the way from Virginia. The server worked perfectly.


There was a really small oversight. My pc has a 1.3 kilowatt power supply for a reason, and it was running 24/7 for 10 days.


I'm buying a raspberry pi 3 to use as a media server. The electricity bill will be much lower Smile
theprogrammingcube wrote:

I set in my pc bios to restart on power loss. I then moved the pc cord to a wall socket directly, so the automatic surge protector in the outlet board wouldn't interfere powering back on.Smile


Uh, what'd you do that for? The UPS is supposed to keep your computer on 24/7. If your computer never loses power, your UPS is doing its job. Likewise, the surge protector is intended to keep the current relatively clean and free of any random stuff that might damage your computer. I assure you it will not interfere in the process of your computer wanting to turn back on.
I don't have a UPS for my PC (not enough money for such a beast). I know that plugging in a desktop to a wall socket directly isn't really desirable, but it was just for a week and I needed a quick fix.

The power strip/surge protector thing actually did hinder my devices. For some reason, after a power loss, one needs to press the reset button on the strip to power everything back on.
I'm glad to hear it worked out! Pretty clever work around for the Dynamic IP, too!

theprogrammingcube wrote:
My pc has a 1.3 kilowatt power supply for a reason


oldmud0 wrote:
Uh, what'd you do that for? The UPS is supposed to keep your computer on 24/7.


He doesn't have a UPS. The PSU for his computer is 1.3kW. The UPS for my computer, monitor and, NAS only lasts for about 45 minutes and that's with a 1500VA. My computer has a max power draw of 80w, my NAS consumes a max of 29w and, my monitor draws a max of 21w. That alone is less than 10x what his PSU supplies and that's IF everything is under load. Right now, UPS is supplying 63w to all three of those devices. 21w for my monitor, maybe 35w for my computer and the remaining 7 for my NAS; playing a 1080p video file with 5.1 surround from my iPad off the NAS jumps the total wattage to 72. Surprisingly, my run time is estimated at 90 minutes, not 45. I guess 45 is a full load.

He'd probably be lucky to get 5 minutes with my UPS. As to why his PSU was constantly supplying 1.3kW to an idle computer, I don't know but my understanding is that it shouldn't happen. Maybe it isn't Energy Star certified, which regardless that shouldn't be a "feature" devoid on uncertified PSUs.

oldmud0 wrote:
Likewise, the surge protector is intended to keep the current relatively clean and free of any random stuff that might damage your computer.

Most basic surge protectors won't. They'll likely trip to prevent damage. Such as a brown-out or, power surge. It's likely safer for the computer to inexplicably shut off in the event of a brown-out than to run on a faulty and low signal. I may very well be wrong, I'm not that technical with power and sine waves. And, per it's name, that the surge protector will fail first in the event of a surge rather than the devices connected to it. In that regard, my UPS also supplies a clean sine wave. Admittedly, I don't need the Sinewave feature as none of my devices have a PFC PSU but I didn't want to be limited when I upgrade to a proper desktop.

The UPS I have has come in handy many a time. While the 90 minute run time is most likely very optimistic, I have had about 30-45 minutes of real world use. I had a power outage for 2 hours and a brown out 90 minutes before the black out finally happened. The UPS kept everything powered for those 90 minutes and briefly into the power outage. More than enough time for me to save my work and safely shut down my devices.

Cube: To restate a question above, why is your computer constantly supplying 1.3kW?!
Alex wrote:

Cube: To restate a question above, why is your computer constantly supplying 1.3kW?!

I would be shocked if the machine's max draw was more than about 600W, unless he has more than one gigantic GPU in the system. For any sane configuration 1.3 kW is hugely excessive, even if he's running a FX-9590 with its completely absurd 220W TDP.
It wasn't under load for 1.3 kW constantly. It was pulling around 500 watts idle (I have a 220 watt cup clocked and locked at 5.1 ghz) and the r9 390x crossfire/overclocked probably doesn't help. Under load, with video decoding, it pulls 900 watts
Ah, okay. You said it was running for 10 days straight and mentioned the 1.3kW PSU so I assumed it was always at 1.3kW. Which, I had a suspicion wasn't true but when you mentioned electricity bill I doubted my initial suspicion. Haha

I know it's all in the past but now I'm just curious. Why didn't you have the computer go to sleep after x hours of inactivity and using the Wake on LAN to only power the computer on while it's needed?
Thats the thing. Perhaps you guys could help with that too.


My PC goes to sleep when I want it to...mostly.

It seems that every other time it goes to sleep (manually, remotely, or automatically after X amount of time), the screen goes black but everything else runs. The keyboard is still illuminating normally, the sound works, everything is running as if the monitor was disconnected. The issue here is that when the PC goes into this "fake sleep" mode, I can't wake it up OR set it to real sleep remotely. I have to move the mouse to turn the screen back on, and then everything works fine. Moving the mouse shouldn't wake the computer up from sleep.


Any idea what is causing this weird glitch? Its Windows 10.

Also, the 1.3 kW psu was for when I had two R9 295x2's in crossfire. It was kind of insane.
theprogrammingcube wrote:
I can't wake it up OR set it to real sleep remotely. I have to move the mouse to turn the screen back on, and then everything works fine.


What? What ways do you try to wake it up that you then resort to moving the mouse?
Nonetheless, it sounds like the computer is putting the display to sleep, not itself.

EDIT: I totally just got what you said. But leaving that there for posterity and humility.


So, do you have to just move the cursor or the mouse that is physically connected to the computer? When you connect remotely in this "fake sleep" is the remote window black? I'm confused.
Well, a keyboard press or mouse movement works just fine. Its exactly as you said, its like the display just turned off, like a screensaver. There is no screensaver though.

Thats a thought. I should set a screensaver and then see if the screensaver shows up when that happens.
  
Register to Join the Conversation
Have your own thoughts to add to this or any other topic? Want to ask a question, offer a suggestion, share your own programs and projects, upload a file to the file archives, get help with calculator and computer programming, or simply chat with like-minded coders and tech and calculator enthusiasts via the site-wide AJAX SAX widget? Registration for a free Cemetech account only takes a minute.

» Go to Registration page
Page 1 of 1
» All times are UTC - 5 Hours
 
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

 

Advertisement