So I have read many a post about getting an extender to wake up an MCE machine - which appears simple enough... but what about in reverse....

I want my MCE machine to wake up a file server on the network - where all my videos / photo's / music sit... So I need the MCE machine to wake up another XP machine.

Easily done - the XP file server has the LAN Bios setting to Wake on Lan for any ping packets... The MCE machine when required accesses this machine via the network and wakes the file server up.

Unfortunately the file server wakes up to a lot of other traffic and regularly starts up every hour or so. The solution would be to have the file server only wake up if it was sent a magic packet.

But how can I get the MCE machine to send a magic packet when My Videos or My Photos is selected !! I have found various standalone programs for XP that will send a magic packet (command line / XP Gui systems) - and yes I could place one of these in the More Programs with a nice icon that you could select and run - but that would not be as nice from a users point of view.

 

Guessing no-one has solved this problem as yet? Guessing that nothing already exists. Guessing the only way I could do this is to have a monitor running on the MCE machine, watching the network requests waiting, and automatically sending a magic packet as required.... Or anyone got a better clue before I start hacking into code I know very little about!

Hi

Could you not use something like Girder to capture (or learn) the My Videos event and then use it to execute a WOL from the command line.

Marchino

Nice idea marchino - not sure if thats the path I will try though - but I think I shall investigate trapping the My Videos event another way.... maybe - just maybe.... Oh well, at least you have given me an idea... I'll think some more for a week or so, and then play - let you know what I have found / done....

I have a Win xp based file server for 3 MCE machines that are about the house that is pretty good at waking up only when its suppoed to. I've only set the NF4 LAN adaptor to do WOL from device manager not the bios.

I've also forced it never to become the browse master in the registry which can help a lot with the constant waking up problem. There are MS articles on how to do this, easy to locate. If your router/gateway is issuing dhcp addresses, make these static and then there is less need for browsing to help resolve addresses. I can't remember, but I may have put a hosts file on each machine reflecting their addresses. An lmhosts file seemed to cause all sorts of problems with MCE though so don't go there.

Hey all,

I have managed to create an add-on for Windows MCE that will allow a WOL packet to be sent from a button in the MCE Front end.

Currently it is hard coded with my server's MAC address but if there is the appettite for it I will try to make it avaliable in a more configurable version?

One hurdle will be creating an installation file, so if anyone knows an easy way to do this give me a shout.

Regards,

Neil

Ok so I was lloking for a solution and couldn't find any so i had to come up with one by myself
So here it is :

I have  MCE2005 RUNNIG ALL MY MOVIES AND MUSIC A LOT 1.5 TB
AND I HAVE ANOTHER MCE IN MY BEDROOM IN THE LOCAL NETWORK
I WANTED THAT EVERY TIME YOU TURN ON THE BEDROOM MCE ( TURN ON FROM STANDBY) MY MAIN MCE WILL WAKE UP FROM STANDBY S3 ON BOTH SYSTEMS

NOW THE WAKE UP ACTION HAVE TO WORK IN THE BACKGROUND WITHOUT A USER ACTION .

THE SOLUTION IS:

1. YOU NEED A WAKE ON LAN CAPABLE MOTHERBOARD MAKE SURE IT IS ENABLED AT THE BIOS
2.USE ANY PROGRAM TO SEND A MAGIC PACKET TO WAKE THE MAIN MCE OVER THA LAN
3. BEFORE THE NEXT STEP MAKE SURE YOU ARE ABLE TO WAKE THE MAIN ,CE FROM S3 MODE

4. I USED A SMALL APPLICATION THAT WORKS IN CMD MODE (mc-wol.exe)
 AND CREATED A BATCH FILE TO WAKE THE MAIN MCE

TO MAKE THE BATCH FILE IS VERY EASY .
1.OPEN A TEXT DOCUMENT AND TYPE IN C:/mc-wol.exe "Mac Address of the pc you want to wake"  Ex. c:/mc-wol.exe 00:00:00:00:00:00 than save the file with extension .bat Ex. wake_my_mce.bat now copy the mc-wol.exe app on C:/ Drive and when u click the bat file it will wake up the main mce

5.the solution i found to run the bat every time the pc return from standby is :"wakeup.exe" a small free application online that can do it in the wakeup.exe  check : Allow standby , check launce application upon .... than browse to the bat file.

now when you close (red X corner) the app will go to service tray
right click the systray icon -> option
 and check both run at startup and minimize at startup
good luckk
Gil Zohar '

if that was helpfull reply

Can you post a link to the wakeup.exe program you downloaded?

Hi,

 You can use Network Shutdown Tool. It's program can wake up, reboot, shutdown multiple computers simultaneously.