How to Turn On Your PC Remotely Using Wake On LAN

How many times have you thought it would be useful to turn on your computer remotely when you weren’t in front of it, but it was turned off? Surely this situation has happened at some point, but you can know that, even if it is off, suspended or hibernated, you can turn it on remotely with the WOL protocol, Wake On Lan, which stands for “Wake Up Through the Network”. Most PCs have this option, you just have to configure it.

In this guide we are going to show you how to remotely turn on a PC using Wake On Lan. In this way, you can boot your computer wherever you are so that you can use it with a remote desktop or you can connect to a disk drive that you have shared.

But this process requires a configuration that is not very complicated, we will usually have to enable the function so that the PC can turn on or wake up with an option that is in BIOS. Later we will also need the Windows operating system to allow this, applying a small configuration.

Let’s see step by step how to perform these actions.

Set up your BIOS to use Wake On Lan

For this option to work, you have to configure it in BIOS or UEFI so that it can be used, this will allow the packet sent from the network to your PC to allow it to be turned on. We can usually find this option in the Wake Up section of the BIOS. The option may appear directly as WOL or Wake On Lan to enable, but it may also appear to enable from a PCIe device, which includes the network controller built into the motherboards.

If you don’t know all the options that the BIOS has and where exactly it is located, you can take a look until you find it. You can look in Settings and inside in Advanced, but it will depend on each motherboard model.

Once you have located this WOL or Wake by PCIe Device option, you just have to enable it, make sure you save your changes, and restart it so that it is enabled.

Within the BIOS configuration we will not have to make any more changes, the next step is to configure Windows to enable this protocol that will allow us to boot the PC, even when it is turned off, from the internet.

Set up the network card for WOL in Windows 11

To be able to use WOL we will have to enable it on the network interface, preferably using Ethernet, although WiFi should also work. To perform this action we follow these simple steps:

1. Go to Start and then Settings.
2. Now we click on Network and Internet.
3. We click on the last option, Advanced Network Settings.
4. Click on the arrow of the adapter that we are going to use for WOL, which must be the same as the one we have configured in BIOS, and click on Edit in the More options section of the adapter.
5. In the Ethernet Properties window we will have to click on Configure.
6. Now let’s go to the Power Management tab.
7. We must have the options Allow this device to reactivate the computer, and also Allow only one Magic Packet to reactivate the computer. With the latter option, we reduce the possibility of the computer being unintentionally activated by other traffic on the network.
8. We click on OK and we have everything ready.

You also have to make sure that the Wake on Magic Packet option is enabled, for this you have to follow these steps:

1. Log in to Device Manager, you can search for Device Manager in the Windows search box to enter.
2. Now drop down the Network Adapters to see the ones you have available.
3. Select the one you’re going to use for WOL and right-click and select Properties. Go to Advanced Options.
4. Towards the end, you will see the Wake on Magic Packet option, this should be Enabled.

In addition to this, we must have a fixed IP address configured for WOL to work properly, as the next step will be to configure our router to allow and redirect the Magic Packet to the correct place. Also, the steps are pretty much the same for Windows 10.

Configure your router to allow you to turn on a PC

With the settings so far, it allows you to start your PC within the local network, that is, within the same network. But in order to wake up or turn on the PC remotely you will need to redirect the Magic Packet to the IP of your computer, for this you will have to redirect this packet on your router. This is achieved by opening port 9 in UDP pointing to the local IP of the computer we want to wake up.

Every router is different, so we can’t teach a step-by-step guide of how this is done. Simply look up how to open UDP port number 9 and you’ll have everything set up on your router.

Once this part is finished, we will have everything ready to boot our PC from anywhere on the Internet.

Boot your PC from the Internet

To be able to boot the PC through WOL, now that we have everything properly configured, we only have to send the famous Magic Packet. For this we will use a program that does it for us, so you can have your computer on to connect to it, to a storage unit of its or have the services that you have configured when it is on.

You have options for Windows or even for your mobile phone, I use one called Wake On Lan and it’s free in the Play Store and App Store. For Windows you can even use the same remote desktop software AnyDesk, or TeamViewer that include an option for WOL and thus be able to wake up the computers that you have turned off or asleep on the network.

You can also search for specific software for this, a simple search for Wake On Lan in the Microsoft Store will throw you up at least 4 free alternatives such as Easy WOL, Wake on Lan (Magic Packet), Simple Wake-on-LAN or Wake PC on LAN. In order to configure the software you will also need to know the MAC address of the computer that has the network card to which you have associated WOL. To find out more about it, just go to:

1. Open the Windows Start Menu and go to Settings and Network & Internet.
2. Go to the Ethernet section.
3. At the end of this window you have the physical address (MAC) of your card.

Now all you have to do is fill in the data in the corresponding app to use Wake-On-Lan from the Internet.

With Wake-On-Lan you can remotely turn on your computer

With Wake On Lan you can turn on your PC from anywhere, you have already seen that it is possible even with an application for your mobile phone. If for any reason you need a file from your PC, access a service or simply connect with remote desktop, with Wake On Lan it is that simple.