Question WakeOnLan not working, ethernet link light is off even if laptop is on, but ethernet connection works fine because laptop gets online ?

[thosecars82]

I did all I found online to try to enable WOL on a Win 11 laptop but it still does not work. I found something that seems weird:

I remember the laptop's ethernet port used to have an orangish light on but I do not see that light on anymore even while the computer is on and can get online through the ethernet connection (I disabled WIFI for this test). The ethernet connection seems to work well.

The laptop is connected to Router B, which is functioning only as a hub. Router B is connected via Ethernet to Router A, which is acting as the router in the LAN.

Wake on Lan is enabled in the UEFI, as displayed on

https://imgur.com/a/dFYWMix

View: https://imgur.com/a/dFYWMix

The laptop is an Acer Aspire 5:

model number A515-55​

Serial Number: NXHSLEB0030392841D7600

All windows 11 updates are installed. There is no optional windows update pending to be installed.

Intel Driver support assistant shows this:

https://imgur.com/a/RZCMPRS

View: https://imgur.com/a/RZCMPRS

https://imgur.com/a/IxIsbKK

View: https://imgur.com/a/IxIsbKK

I have tried the same ethernet cable with a different computer and the led orange and yellow lights of the other computer's ethernet port get on.

Does anyone know how I could debug this?

Thanks

 

[bill001g]

Microsoft has made a huge mess of WOL. They have many sleep/suspend options with different types of traffic that can wake the machine.

There are also power saving setting that can mess with this.

As it appears you have found out the ethernet port is powered when it is in wake on lan mode. My machine will drop the ethernet port to 100mbps when they are WOL mode. Some machine will turn the led off on the laptop ethernet port but the router/switch will still have a light showing the port is active.

Used to be you would set all of this is this BIOS and be done with it. Microsoft unfortunately now changes bios settings from their massive pile of crap of a OS. Who know where they hid the options in the latest patches. Be nice if they were like linux that even if they have some GUI panel you could still key commands to set things.

You are just going to have to dig around all the screens. It is likely some power saving setting that turns off the ethernet card that does not check if WOL is activated. It could also be BIOS settings since many bios vendors now support all the microsoft unique power/wake garbage.

Note even if you get this to work WOL is very flaky. Many times you must send multiple wake packets to get it to work. Also there is not such thing as Wake on WAN so do not think you are going to get this to work from outside you LAN.

 

[Ralston18]

You might be able to get WOL to work using Powershell.

As posted in the preceding post the results could be flaky.

And overall problematic.

FYI:

https://www.partitionwizard.com/news/wake-on-lan-windows-11.html

More involved/complex:

https://www.pdq.com/blog/wake-on-lan-wol-magic-packet-powershell/

You can search for similar links using words and phrases such as "Network WOL powershell".

What will actually work and reliably work is the key issue.

Test from simple to complex.

See if you can get WOL to consistently work via manual commands.

Then automate the commands and process thereafter.