Wake on LAN & WinXP sleep state..

[BlueMagician]

I have two problems:

1. The PC won't go to sleep by itself, despite a 5 minute duration being set in Power Options. However, it will go to sleep fine if I select sleep from the Start menu. Which leads me on to...

2. With WOL enabled, the PC wakes up by itself no less than a minute afte I put it to sleep. I've narrowed it down a bit, and it only wakes up by itself when the router is connected to the LAN.

RE # 1: Why wont my PC put itself to sleep?

RE # 2: I've got the router and the WinXP firewall up, and no ports redirected to my PC's IP address. I'm not sending a Magic Packet, or pinging the PC, so what is it listening to that's making it wake?

The LAN card is a Marvel Yukon Gigabit onboard my DFI NF4 mobo, and my router is a Draytek Vigor.. I'm probably missing something really obvious, but can someone point me in the right direction?


Thanks in advance!
S :: bluemagician

[ajbrun]

BlueMagician - you don't need to set it to sleep do you? If the PC's off, doesn't it just startup when it recieves a WOL packet? I know it's not exactly the same, but you may be interested in my problem:


I tried doing WOL via the internet once, using - http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/woli.aspx

It works, but it only works for a short time after the PC was turned off. For some reason, it won't work a night after the PC was last used. Anyone got any idea why? Maybe the router only lets incoming traffic in only while to PC is on, and a short time afterwards.

*********************

BlueMagician - how have you enabled WOL? Via your router or somewhere else? I'm guessing you PC is coming off sleep because you PC has woken itself up to do something. What, I'm not sure though.

[joeka]

2. With WOL enabled, the PC wakes up by itself no less than a minute afte I put it to sleep. I've narrowed it down a bit, and it only wakes up by itself when the router is connected to the LAN.

I had a similar problem with my media PC...

If you go to device manager and right click on your network card and select the Power Management tab. Make sure the option "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" is checked - along with the option "Only allow management stations to bring the computer out of standby". This fixed my problem of the PC automatically waking itself after it had been in standby for minute.

Now, if you do need to wake your PC remotely I use the Wake On Lan Command Line tool available from http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-cmd.aspx. I set up a script on another PC, so when I need to open a network share it first sends a "Magic WOL Packet" and then opens the shared folder.

Hope this is of some help.

[BlueMagician]

...For some reason, it won't work a night after the PC was last used. Anyone got any idea why?...

Isn't this something to do with the router clearing the lookup table (or whatever) after a certain amount of time or something? I read something about that this morning, and can't find it now - lol.

I was particularly interested in WOL from Sleep because of the time-to-ready is really quick. I basically want my PC to sleep when it's not being used or playing host to another device on my LAN, but wake up and start 'serving' if a request is received over LAN.

I thought it would be easly, but it's proving a little funky, in a tricky way..

S.

[TheAnimus]

indeed, ajbrun's question is quite simple.

In TCP/IP you have this thing called ARP or Address Resolution Protocol, this puts those nice fancy IPs, to real MAC addresses. Now your router has an ARP cache, which each entry has a TTL (Time To Live) in, so after too much inactivitity, it gets expunged. WOL is to MAC addresses!

Now as for blue's not sleeping, i take it the obvious have been done? Chipset drivers, BIOS to P&P aware OS? WOL should be possible from sleep.

[BlueMagician]

...Now, if you do need to wake your PC remotely I use the Wake On Lan Command Line tool available from http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-cmd.aspx. I set up a script on another PC, so when I need to open a network share it first sends a "Magic WOL Packet" and then opens the shared folder.

Hope this is of some help.

Thanks joeka.. I'd got half way there, unfortunately it's a thin client running on my network that I want to be able to 'wake' the PC, therefore, no access to command line or running progs of any kind.

I guess, looking at it from another point of view, perhaps the service that talks to the thin client should be keeping it's ears open for a request from the thin client - unfotunately, AFAIK, that service shuts down when the computer goes to sleep.

Chicken and the Egg methinks..
S.

[BlueMagician]

Thank you all so far for responses - It's nice to share a problem!

...Now as for blue's not sleeping, i take it the obvious have been done? Chipset drivers, BIOS to P&P aware OS? WOL should be possible from sleep...

There a several issues here:

1. The PC will sleep if I tell it to, BUT it will not sleep automatically.

2. With WOL enabled, the PC will not _stay_ asleep.
It stays asleep for about 45 seconds, and will then Wake up by itself. I can't figure out why, as the router is firewalled, and not set to route anything specifically to the PC's IP - so what's making it wake? The router itself for some reason?

On the upside - if I ping the PC within that minute, before it wakes _itself_, it will indeed wake up as I want it to. But I only want it to wake to requests from inside my LAN, not for any other reason...


Sorry for being a numpty, and babbling..
S.

[TheAnimus]

ah so the problem is any packet will wake it, what happens if you run ethereal in premiscous mode on another computer, on the same hub? You'll probably find theres a packet there. Joeka is probably spot on as for the solution

[BlueMagician]

ah so the problem is any packet will wake it, what happens if you run ethereal in premiscous mode on another computer, on the same hub? You'll probably find theres a packet there. Joeka is probably spot on as for the solution

Thanks for the suggestion TA.. Indeed, running Ethereal revealed that the router is broadcasting ARP requests VERY frequently. The sniffer notched up 18 ARP packets in a 4 minute window.

So, I'm guessing it's down to router config to try and stop these broadcasts? Or at least cut them down. Does it have anything to do with DHCP leasing? If I assign static IP's, will the router desist from broadcasting this packet that is giving my PC insomnia?

Joeka's solution would be grand, but it's not appropriate for my situation. I've a thin client set top box (read: Hauppauge MediaMVP) that talks to my PC, but AFAIK it has no ability to send a magic packet by itself.

With the 'Only allow management stations to bring computer out of standby' option in Power Management UNTICKED, a simple ping/request will infact wake the PC, which is what I want - unfortunately this dammed ARP packet from the router gets there first.

So, I either need to stop the router broadcasting the ARP, or get the PC WOL/LAN feature to ignore it.


Hmmm.. closer and closer..
S.

[BlueMagician]

Grrr... I've mapped a fixed IP in the routers DCHP server table to the MAC address of the PC's LAN card, and STILL the router insists on sending 'Who is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' requests via ARP!

It knows the dammed MAC address of the NIC with the IP it's querying, and yet it still broadcasts the question - which continues to wake the bl***y PC.

So, as I said above, I've still either gotta stop this Router shouting over the network, or I've gotta stop the PC waking up to listen to ARP's. Does anyone know of some 'better' Marvel Yukon drivers for the DFI NF4 that adds an 'ignore ARP WOL' option??


Advice appreciated guys and gals.. thanks..
S :: bluemagician

[TheAnimus]

Its probably just to help in the aging of its ARP cache, often you can't be clever when writing embedded stuff, indeed i found that allowing a uC i was using to stack UDP requests ment that it could now be DoS'd with a simple 1024k packet So people cut corners.

its the PC thats been woken up by this thou yeh? So as joeka says, you can just go into the properties tab of the NIC, on the box i'm on now its an intel PRO/1000 MT dual port server one, and i have the property in the advanced tab, "Wave On Settings".

Change that to only a Magic Packet.

Directed simply means any packet that has the MAC address will wake it (such as these ARP ones). I doubt the router is sending magic packets on its own, so that should do the trick, assuming your LAN driver gives you the option!