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Wake on LAN is not working in Windows 7 — Found the solution

I have been struggling for a while to identify why Wake On LAN is not working since I installed Windows 7 on my computer. It worked fine with Windows XP but after moving to windows 7, it never worked. After lot of testing and trying various things, I finally reached the solution.

So, here you go…

There is something called PME(Power Management Event) in Network connection properties which should be in enabled state to make your Windows 7 computer process the magic packets to wake up your computer.

To enable PME, follow the below steps.

  •  Go to Start -> Run -> Type “ncpa.cpl” and click OK
  • This opens up the network connections available in the computer. Here identify the NIC on which your computer will receive magic packets and go the properties of it.
  • Click on Configure and Switch to advanced tab and select “Enable PME” property list and change the value to “Enable”
  • Click on OK to complete the configuration.

This will make your network connection to blip briefly. Once your network connection is back your computer is ready to process the WOL packets. Shutdown your computer and try sending magic packet again. It should work without any issues.

Relavant articles:

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-008459.htm

Feel free to post any questions that you have about WOL in windows.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Gordon Currie July 21, 2011, 9:40 pm

    There is no PME setting in my Realtek, Broadcom or Atheros network adapters. This only works for Intel adapters.

  • David December 21, 2011, 4:23 am

    Hi thanks, I was going nuts trying to turn my PC on… did this and now it works a charm!!!

  • Sitaram Pamarthi December 21, 2011, 12:04 pm

    Glad to know that it helped you. 🙂

  • Rx February 19, 2012, 12:26 am

    Thank You so much… I was going nuts as well… Cause it worked on vista…but in 7 I never got it working before that. Thanks again!

  • Per Gravesen November 9, 2012, 10:01 pm

    Hi
    I have a rather strange problem with WOL. It works, for about 5 minutes. If the PC (win7) is put to sleep, I can WOL within about 5 minutes. After that, it ignores the WOL, and sleeps on. I have checked if the PC turnes to hypernation after a while, but it doesn´t. It is still only at sleep. Does anyone have a suggestion?

    • Hammad February 11, 2014, 11:00 pm

      This issue may be because of the address resolution protocol table of the router(if you are using one) also called arp in short.When your computer is turned off and if it stays off for more than 5 minutes as you said, the router forgets the link or relationship between the mac address & ip address of the PC you want to wake up.I suppose you might already have reserved a specific ip address for the destined pc in the dhcp reservation table.You might have to upgrade the router to solve this problem if you are already using one.

  • Sergi January 16, 2013, 4:43 am

    Hi,

    I’ve been trying to activate WOL with no luck with Asus Sabertooth P67 mobo… In my case the option is in “power management” tab instead of “advanced”…

    it worked like a charm, thanks!!!

  • Guy July 26, 2013, 4:35 pm

    So what is the parallel configuration in Realtek network adapter ?

  • Jon February 1, 2014, 11:55 pm

    Fantastic, I was scratching my head about that. Thanks!