How to Setup Wake on LAN on Your Dell System

Table of Contents

• What is Wake on LAN?
• Prerequisites
• BIOS Settings
• Driver Settings
• How to wake the computer up

What is Wake on LAN?

Wake on LAN is a feature of Dell System which lets you start your personal computer using a signal over your local Network. In this article, you will learn which settings in the systems BIOS and the Network driver you must setup to use the Wake on LAN (WoL) feature and how to wake up the System once WoL is configured.

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Prerequisites

To use Wake on LAN, you must prepare your System first and the computer has to meet some prerequisites:

• Available Wake on LAN feature. You can check in your computer's manual if WoL is available on your computer.
• Wake on LAN enabled Network Card
• Energy-Efficient Ethernet must be deactivated.
• Deep Sleep must be deactivated in BIOS if the option is present.
• System must be in S3, S4, or S5 state, this also depends on your computer model.
  Note: For further Information on the System States, see this article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

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BIOS Settings

In order to use the Wake on LAN feature, you must set some settings within the systems BIOS. To do so, follow these steps:

• Restart the System and press the F2 key multiple times.
• In the computer BIOS, go to Power Management and Wake on LAN/WLAN.
• Activate the Option that you want to use.
  NOTE: Please be aware that Wake on WLAN is not available on all computer models and in all System states.
• Go to Deep Sleep Control and disable the Option.
• Click Apply and Exit the BIOS.

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Driver Settings

Back in Windows, you have to set up Wake on LAN in your Network Card Driver. Please follow these steps to do so:

• Open the Device Manager. In Windows 10, you can right-click the Windows Button and choose Device Manager.
• Go to Network adapters and open the category.
• Right-click your LAN Controller and choose Properties.
• Open the tab Power Management.
• Ensure that the following boxes are checked: Allow this device to wake the computer, Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer.
• Now open the advanced tab and choose Energy-Efficient Ethernet.
  NOTE: This option is not available for all computer models.
• Set this option to disabled.
• Click OK and close the Device Manager.
• Go to Control Panel then Hardware and Sound, Power Options and System Settings.
  • At the top click on Change settings that are currently unavailable.
  • At the bottom, clear Turn on fast startup.
  • Click save changes.

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How to wake the computer up

First, you should check if all Settings are done correctly. Shut down the computer and check if the Network LEDs are still on. If so, the settings are fine and you can use WoL.

In this example, we will use the wol.exe, but you are free to use any of the plenty Wake on LAN tools available.

Please choose the Wake on LAN tool that suits your needs and download it. You can find plenty of them in a Websearch like Bing or Google.

To configure your Wake on LAN Tool follow these steps (steps may vary on other tools):

• Start the System that you want to wake up. Once in Windows, open the command prompt with administrator rights. Open start type in CMD, right-click command prompt and choose Run as Administrator.
• Type in ipconfig /all and press Enter.
• Note the physical address of your LAN-Adapter.
  
  Figure 1: Physical Address of the Network Adapter
• Shut down your computer again, or send it into standby.
• On another System in your Network, download and open your Wake on LAN Tool.
• Configure the physical address of the computer you want to wake up (here you need the address you noted before).
• And that is it, now just run your WoL Tool and the System should wake up and boot to Windows.

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• Newer Dell system models will not Wake-On-LAN with Deep Sleep Control set to S5 in the Windows