I love the new Sleep function of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It's a combination between the Standby mode and Hibernation (what we know since Windows 2000). Turning on my sleeping PC is super fast. It takes on 2 seconds and the PC is completely ready for use. But what if your PC is sleeping and you're not home. Well... turn on Wake on LAN!!
- Go to Network Connections (Control Panel, Network and Sharing Center, Manage Connections or Change Adapter Settings);
- Right-click your Local Area Network adapter, choose Properties;
- Go to the Power Management tab and enable 'Allow the device to wake the computer'
- *Make sure WOL/Wake on LAN is enabled at driver level for your NIC. This is different for every hardware vendor*
Also make sure WOL is enabled in your motherboard’s BIOS.
And now... connect via Remote Desktop Connection application to your PC... and ... it awakens!! :-) This can save lots of power because in the past I always let it on in order to access it remote.
Oh one thing. Make sure you select 'Sleep' and not 'Shutdown' . It doesn't work with Shutdown. To wake up your computer after a shutdown, you’ll have to use a WOL-application from another (enabled) PC in the same network.
Update: It works only one time for me. The second time, the PC boots but no magic mainbord 'beep'. The fans turn on, lights on, fans off, light off and this repeats itself all the time :-(