Trouble with Wake on LAN and Wake on Ring

Nemesis:  Today, from the office, using LogMeInFree, my home Optiplex 755 IS reachable.  So Wake on LAN is working on the Optiplex 755, at least for the moment.  Also, first thing this morning when I got up, I used another phone line to call my fax number and Wake on Ring on the Optiplex 755 answered. 

So far, so good.  Unfortunately, this has always been an intermittent problem, so I'll need to see if it holds good for a while.

What did I do?  I followed another of your suggestions above and re-updated the chipset from the Dell Support Driver downloads for my Optiplex 755 .  I had done this before with exactly the same version download, but maybe this needed to be redone for some reason.

Also, I went back to Intel for any further driver updates for my NIC, saw that Intel had an even newer version of PROXP.exe (posted as recently as Oct. 23), downloaded and ran it.

So, this morning, I'm doing OK.

Given that it's working, I have not yet checked dslreports/wake but might try that later.

To respond to your post and answer your questions directly above:

-  I have never made or re-installed an image of any computer, so I'm wary of trying it.  Nor do I have any special equipment.  Open to your suggestions for how to do this.  The hard disk on my Optiplex 755 has a total capacity of 159GB, of which 82GB is now used.  I have an external hard drive (plugged into the USB port of the Optiplex and appearing as the E:\ drive) with a total capacity of 80GB of which only 37GB is now free.  The Optiplex also has a CD/DVD burner.

-  Currently on my home network, besides the Optiplex 755 (wired) I have (1) an old PC from another company with WinXPPro SP3 (wired), but that's a slower machine with about half the hard disk space, most of which is now used.  I think I have about 16 - 20GB free space left.  I also have (2) a 9-year old laptop from yet another company running Win98SE (wireless WiFi) with a total hard disk capacity of 12GB of which about 60% is used.  That's been turned off for about two months now.  Other than that I have (3) a printer (wireless WiFi), (4) a VOIP modem (wired) and (5) when I'm home, a blackberry (wireless WiFi) for office email.  We also sometimes have (6) my wife's Dell laptop running WinXPPro SP3 (wireless WiFi), but not this month.  But I shall try dslreports/wakelater from the office to be really sure its signal is external to my home network.

1)  My BIOS definitely has all the Wake On options turned ON.  I've checked that about 20 times.

2)  In Device Manager for my fax modem card, "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" is checked ON.  That's been true since day 1.

3)  In Device Manager for BOTH my NIC and my fax modem, every setting related to "Wake On" in Power Management is ON.  Their Advanced tabs don't show anything relevant.  I have screenshots of these - how can I send you?  I'm trying to attach here as a Word doc but I don't think this will work -->  http://en.community.dell.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Discussions.Components.Files/3324/1732.Screenshots-for-Wake-On-11_2D00_3_2D00_09.doc

And these are my screensaver and power management settings, which I believe is what you mean re the OS power settings:

Screensaver: XP logo after 9 minutes; do NOT show welcome screen on resume.

Power Settings: Home/Office Desk; Turn Off Monitor after 10 mins; Turn Off Hard Disks Never; System Standby after 20 mins; System Hibernates Never; Do NOT prompt for password when computer resumes from standby.

4)  As I don't have Vista, and things are working this morning, I passed on your suggestion 4).

5)  Also, as things are working this morning, I am not looking for older drivers at the moment.

Nemesis:  Please stay tuned and watch this post from time to time.  I'll post again if things go bad.  If days and weeks pass without a new post, we're good, although we don;t know 100% exactly why.

Thanks again.

Nemesis:  Sorry to report, but things did go bad.  It looks like I thought things had gone better, but I only recently discovered that my LogMeInFree was preventing my PC from going to sleep!!  That made the PC act AS IF it was waking from sleep, but it was always awake!

I shall repeat all the details here:

I have a Dell Optiplex 755 with WinXPPro SP3, 2GB RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo E4600, and it is unreliable for Wake on LAN and Wake on Ring. I also wonder whether my Standby - Sleep - Suspend (S1 or S3) is working correctly.

When the PC is in Standby - Sleep - Suspend mode (S1 or S3), Wake on LAN and Wake on Ring work some of the time but not all of the time, and I'd like them to be 100% reliable.

These may be two different problems, but your advice will be appreciated. (Also, if I should post in a different forum, please advise.)

My Network Card is an Intel 82566DM-2 Gigabit Network Connection, and I recently upgraded its drivers using "generic" PROXP.exe from the Intel website, although this has not helped the problem. The specific driver file e1e5132.sys is now from 2009 -- it used to be from 2007. But, as I say, Wake on LAN from Standby was not and is still not reliable, both before and after the driver update.

In Settings .. Network Connections ... Local Area Connections ... Properties ... Configure ... Power Management, all the Wake on LAN options are checked ON:

- Wake on Directed Packet
- Wake on Magic Packet
- Wake on Magic Packet from Power Off State
- Wake on Link

The NIC card's Diagnostic checks are all OK.

My fax modem card is a Conexant D850 PCI V.92 Modem, and I have the most recent drivers dated 7/27/07, version 7.67.0.50. In Settings ... Phone and Modem Options ... Modems ... Properties, "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" is checked ON. The MS fax service is configured to answer on zero or one rings.

And I have the same problems regardless of my Screensaver or Power Management settings. (The PC is NOT set to go into Hibernate ever. I have experimented with various settings for Standby, Monitor Off and Hard Disk Drive off, but the problem stays the same regardless, and also appears if I put the PC into Standby manually.)

My Dell BIOS version is A15, the latest for this PC. I have a choice of S1 or S3 for Standby, but the problems are the same regardless which one I choose.

What to do? If it's a BIOS problem, how can I fix?

Another post suggested I stop using ACPI for Power Management and let Windows run Power Management. However, there is no choice in Settings or the BIOS to do that, at least none that I have found.

More symptoms: On this PC I also have LogMeInFree version 4. Just recently, the problems with Wake on LAN and Wake on Ring seemed to go away, but I noticed that the PC was no longer really going to sleep during Standby. When this Dell is in Standby, its power light should blink. I saw that the light would start blinking but then go solid again, and although the monitor stayed dark, the PC certainly "felt" awake. So, I checked some of the log files in LogMeInFree and saw indications that LogMeInFree was reaching out for power every few seconds over and over. So all this past weekend, I exited out of LogMeInFree, saw the PC go into GOOD standby (blinking power light) but my Wake on Ring problem came back. I think the LogMeInFree problem is separate and had the perverse effect of hiding my Wake on Ring and Wake on LAN problems, which return when LogMeInFree is off, but thought I'd let you know.

More to above: Dell has suggested I must re-install Windows. I've never done that, and I realize I'd probably lose all my applications and data - no good. Seems to me that's like using an atomic bomb to kill a mosquito. And why should I assume that will work?

But is there a way to re-install -- or maybe fix -- Windows that leaves everything else safe?

FYI - About a month or so ago, I ran SFC (System File Checker) in repair mode, and that didn't help with this problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Disable wake on directed packets.  It is unreliable and will often cause the computer to wake up when it shouldn't.

Please confgure port forwarding on your router as I advised you earlier (forwarding to the broadcast address).  Please then try sending a magic packet wake up request from the DSL reports website we discussed earlier.  Please post back whether this works or not.  As you have other computers, you should be able to test this from home.

Nemesis:  Thanks for fast response.  Just tried the DSL Reports "Wake my PC remotely" from my other home computer, and my target PC (the Dell Optiplex 755) did NOT wake up.  I have UDP 9 open in BOTH Port Forwarding in my modem-router (to 192.168.1.255) AND as an "exception" in the Firewall in the Optiplex.

For the moment, I'll leave Wake on Directed Packets ON as the problem is total failure to wake up.  If I get the opposite problem again (and it's not LogMeInFree), I'll try turning it off.

But given my Optiplex's determined sleepiness, what should I try next?

Thanks.

UPDATE - My Optiplex 755 is still asleep, but my modem-router freaked out.  It disconnected from the internet, showed me a warning page about rescanning for the WAN connection - a page I'd never seen before - asked me for my user name and password, which I gave it, and then rebooted itself.  It's working after taking some time to realize it's up again..

This is NOT fun.  I don't think I'm going to send that DSL Reports test again.

But my Optiplex 755 slept through the whole thing.

Now, I'm really interested in your thoughts!

Nemesis:  After I sent the UDP 9 DSL test (a few times), I continued working on my other computer and suddenly saw that my internet connection was off.  So I went to 192.168.1.1 and that's when I saw the unusual page re redoing WAN and watched as the modem-router rebooted itself.  It's a Westell 7500, a submodel specifically for Verizon DSL, and I doubt that anyone will tell me whether this router is capable of sending magic packets.  But, as it's a fairly recent model, wouldn't it normally be able to do so?  (As far as I can tell, the word "magic" does not appear in its user manual.)

Shall try your other suggestions later this week - please keep an eye out here.  Thanks again

It was a long shot.  Many routers block attempts to forward packets to the broadcast address.  Go ahead and remove the port forwarding rule.  There is no sense in keeping it in place, especially if it causes your router to reset.

The next goal is to narrow the problem down to the router.  On one of your other computers on your home network, I'd recommend downloading a wake on lan application capable of sending magic packets.  Google can likely point you to many free utilities that will suffice.  I know that this one is popular (though some have reported issues getting it to work with vista):  www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/magic_pkt.exe  .  Try to wake your computer from your home network using this utility.  If this works, then the solution will likely be to get a router capable of issuing wake on lan commands directly (of which there are many).  Alternatively, you could ask the router's maker's technical support staff if it is possible to forward to a broadcast address or otherwise allow for wake on lan.

May I ask, how did your router show the warning page to you?  Were you logged into at the time?  Are you connecting to the router with USB or ethernet?

Router support for wake on lan is hit or miss.  Some allow you to do it from the router's webGUI.  I know some buffalo routers allow this.  Third-party dd-wrt firmware will also allow it, on routers that standard dd-wrt can be installed on. 

On other routers you can occassionally get wake on lan support by telneting into the router and issuing commands directly.  Telnet over the internet raises a host of other problems (like passwords being sent in the clear), however. 

Why not fire off an email to verizon (if they supplied your modem) and tell them that you're having trouble creating a forward to a broadcast address.  It'll probably be a fruitless endevour.  You'll probably have to escalate through several techs before you get a competent answer.  That said, an email back and forth (even if it takes weeks to resolve) won't take too much time and effort on your part.

As to Wake on Ring:

More weeks and still no help on this.  Dell Hardware and Software support ("Dell on Call") have been particularly unhelpful, even though I paid many hundreds for a multi-year warranty.

Here's another angle:

The registry key for the Conexant modem is
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96D-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
  and it has a lot of subkeys.  Two that catch my eye are:
  "EnableACPI - REG_SZ - ON" and
  "EnableSleep - REG_SZ - ON".

  There is another subkey "WOR - REG_BINARY - [long binary string with 0's and f's]"

What do they do?  Should I turn one or both of them off?

BY THE WAY, Conexant's web site says they only supply the chipsets, that the manufacturer (in this case Dell) is reponsible for the final modem card and that all support queries go to the manufacturer (i.e. Dell).  So anything having to do with the card is also Dell's responsibility.  Dell, are you reading this?  How about some help?

This is primarily a user to user forum, so it's unlikely that you will find help from Dell here.  Your best bet is likely to proceed with Dell on Call and Dell Hardware support, though aside from replacing the modem (or motherboard), I'm not sure what they could do to make wake on ring work more consistently.  Bear in mind that any replacements will be refurbished and likely the same hardware -- so if this is a limitation (as opposed to a defect), a replacement will not help you.

Cameron - Thanks for the clarification.  A few ideas:

• Go to LogMeIn support at http://community.logmein.com/logmein/.   Select LMI Free (if that's your LMI product) and the User-to-User forum, and post your issue.  LMI Free has lots of issues since their "upgrade" a few months ago.  Yours is new to me, but please don't keep it a secret.
• Go to Google, and look for and download PC Wizard 2009.  It will tell you LOTS about your PC, including its chipset.
• Go to support.dell.com, drivers&downloads.  Type in your express code or service tag and look for drivers that you might need - better to do this first before trying Intel.

Please post back here and let us know how you're doing.  I'm also having standby problems, and maybe they're all connected issues.

Mr. Cameron:  This sound interesting.  But I'm having a tough time understanding the exact sequence of events in your post - your writing style is a bit abbreviated.  What do you mean by

"I am do have 2 ?'s by the Intel chipsets but the drivers for Vista 64 don't work on the Win 7 64. Go figure. So I will go out to Intel's site and get them and maybe LogMeIn will work, otherwise I will just find another program to use."

Please explain.  As you know, I'm having my own problems and I very much want to get to the bottom of it all.

By the way, are you aware that the 755 comes with something called Intel AMT?  That caused problems at the beginning until I completely shut it off.  Have you had any experience with it, one way or the other?

OK - let me try this again. -

I had issues with the 755 coming out of standby mode. All 3 OS's had Log Me In installed. The last OS installed was Win7 and I still had the same problem. Not being able to come out of standby. I went into MSconfig and disable LogMeIn and rebooted. The computer went into Standby and then when I shook the mouse it came out within 3 seconds. So something with LogMeIn causes issues with something on the Optiplex 755 to not come out of standy. What causes it I don't know.

In Device manager I have two question marks by the PCI Simple Communications Controller and the PCI Serial Port. Which drivers will correct this I don't know. I went to Intel's site but I don' t know what chipset I have in there to know which file to download.

So hopefully this clears up my post. I had several things going at once on my last posting, like the woot off at www.woot.com .

Thanks,

Cameron