Wake-On-Lan (WOL) in Windows 7

Trying to configure Wake-on-Lan on a batch of new HP Windows 7 PCs wasn’t as straight forward as expected. There were 3 things that I needed to do in order for a scheduled batch file to wake them up in the mornings.

1. Turn on the ‘Wake on LAN from S5’ setting in the BIOS.
2. Turn off the ‘Allow the computer to turn of this device to save power’ setting on the ‘Power Management’ tab of the network card’s properties.
3. Set ‘Shutdown Wake-On-Lan’ setting to ‘Enabled’ on the network card’s ‘Advanced’ tab.

It was step 3 that caught me out as my logical brain assumed that enabling this setting would shutdown the WOL feature – the opposite of what I was trying to do. Maybe they should have named it ‘Wake-On-Lan when shutdown’.