"The shortest distance between two points is under construction."
-- Noelie Alito


The "Wake On LAN Utility" is a small, under development utility that will power up other computers in your network. Generally, the target machine will have to be on the same subnet as the computer from which you are running this application (since the "magic packet" is a broadcast), however you can get around this by building off the code base and implementing your own routing solution.

First, the target machine needs to support WOL (Wake On LAN). In some cases, machines are set to support WOL out-of-the-box, but usually this is turned off by default. In essence, the power supply will always provide enough power to the NIC to listen for special packets. In most cases, there's a setting in the BIOS that enables this, as well as in the O/S. In the BIOS, this is typically under power management, and may be labelled "Power on LAN" or "Power on PCI."

In Windows, enter the advanced driver properties page of the network card. Usually, there's a setting labelled, "Wake Up Capabilities" or "Wake On LAN." Ensure this is enabled and set to "Magic Packet."

Now that the target machine is set up, use the app! The first time you launch the utility you'll see an screen like the one below. Once you add hosts, you may want to save the settings (click "Save Settings") so they'll be here next time you load the application. To remove a host, or to send the wake up packet, right click on the computer name and select "Wakey Wakey."



The first thing you should do is click on the settings tab. From here, you can add new hosts manually, or have the app scan your workgroup to find other machines. (I haven't tested this in a domain yet.) When scanning, you'll see a list of machines currently on the network, including their MAC Addresses.



If you want to add machines to your list of hosts, check the boxes for the hosts and click the "Add Checked" button. When you return to the hosts tab, these hosts will appear. Optionally, you can add a new computer manually by entering the computer name, Ip Address, and MAC Address.

Credits: Many thanks to countless people for posting various samples of code on The Code Project and in Google Groups. This project was completed in a couple of hours thanks to the many code snippets they've provided!

Downloads (.NET Framework 1.1 required)
Download C# Source (12k)
Download Application (10k)