Topic: Wake on LAN, …NOT!

[nate]

I recently got some new workstations for some users on my network and I am having the strangest problem.  They are Win-XP Pro boxes and if the power management is turned on they go to sleep and never wake up!  That is, the network won’t wake on LAN.  The hardware is HP dc7600 with the Broadcom Gigibit on board NIC.  All the Windows boxes on my network are configured identical.  I don’t have this issue with of the others!
 
If the system standby is set to 15 minutes, the machine will sleep and will not respond to a ping or anything else I can throw at it - Except for one thing - In the DHCP Manager Panel in SME the status says “Wake Up” in red letters.  If I send a wake up call to the sleeping machine it works!!!  I can ping the box again, connect to shares, etc.
 
Two Questions:

(1)   What is the DHCP server sending when you hit the Wake Up button?
(2)   Has anyone ever had this issue?
 
Any info would be helpful.

Nate -

[cactus]

I recently got some new workstations for some users on my network and I am having the strangest problem.  They are Win-XP Pro boxes and if the power management is turned on they go to sleep and never wake up!  That is, the network won’t wake on LAN.  The hardware is HP dc7600 with the Broadcom Gigibit on board NIC.  All the Windows boxes on my network are configured identical.  I don’t have this issue with of the others!
 
If the system standby is set to 15 minutes, the machine will sleep and will not respond to a ping or anything else I can throw at it - Except for one thing - In the DHCP Manager Panel in SME the status says “Wake Up” in red letters.  If I send a wake up call to the sleeping machine it works!!!  I can ping the box again, connect to shares, etc.
 
Two Questions:

(1)   What is the DHCP server sending when you hit the Wake Up button?

As far as I know it is normal for machines not to wake up on all network contact being send to it, it needs a specified wake-up code, which is send by the Wake Up button. Maybe this mini-howto will shed some light on the WOL concept/protocol.

[nate]

As far as I know it is normal for machines not to wake up on all network contact being send to it, it needs a specified wake-up code, which is send by the Wake Up button. Maybe this mini-howto will shed some light on the WOL concept/protocol.

 
Interesting,  according to your how-to all my other computers should not be able to wake up as they do?  Is this perhaps an old how-to?  I have never heard about a three pin connector?  I also have windows 2000 boxes and they go into standby and wake up - no problem!  Also I have other XP boxes that work perfectly this way.  The way I know it to work is there is power management in the BIOS, in the OS and in the NIC, If the BIOS is set to let the OS manage the power it will use the scheme you set up in the OS.  The NIC simply needs to support it and be set to allow WOL.
 
Anyway, the issue is that it has always worked fine with default settings and it is only XP running on an HP dc7600 that has ever cause me problems.  - BTW - HP tech support knows absolutely nothing of any value.   They told me to replace the motherboard.  I guess they missed that part where I explained to them several times that it's the same on all seven of these boxes!
 
My simple solution for now is to leave the power management off on these boxes.  - Not a good thing as power management is an important feature for many reasons.

[william_syd]

I have never heard about a three pin connector?

Most consumer grade boards that I've seen have this connector. Don't know about server boards.

You could download the AMD magicpacket utility and try that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN

I have seen instructions for newer consumer MB that have options in the bios for wake-on-lan regarding what triggers a wake-up. Also Power-on-by-PCI-device may have an effect.

[nate]

Most consumer grade boards that I've seen have this connector. Don't know about server boards.

You could download the AMD magicpacket utility and try that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN

I have seen instructions for newer consumer MB that have options in the bios for wake-on-lan regarding what triggers a wake-up. Also Power-on-by-PCI-device may have an effect.

Thank you for the reply.

Maybe I just haven't looked for the connector?  It's always just worked for me.  Anyway, I understand there are different "states" of power management, hibernate, suspend, standby, sleep, etc. and they are all a bit different.  I am only talking about "standby".  For example, I have computers that go into "standby" after fifteen minutes - the monitor shuts off, the fan shuts off and the whole thing looks dead.   If I connect using VNC I can watch (and hear) the unit come back to life.  When I disconnect the VNC session it goes back into standby again in fifteen minutes.  
 
The odd thing about my situation is that I have many computers with the same software installed and they all work like this.  However, the HP dc7600 fails in this capacity.
 
As an update to this post, I have removed all power management (BIOS, NIC) except for the OS settings on the misbehaving systems.  Now they work but not correctly.  They don't come to life right away, but after two or three attempts to connect they finally do allow a terminal session, their shares become available and I am able to ping them and see them on the network. - BUT - When you walk over to them, after forcing them back to life remotely, if you hit the space bar, toggle the escape key etc., they do not respond and the only way to access them locally is to push and hold in the power switch for ten seconds?
 
So, as you can see this is a very frustrating issue!  
 
It must be something with this hardware and how it interacts with XP.
 
I'm ready to blame windows for everything and move on!