Is there a program out there that will turn on my computer for me?

February 8, 2008 6:50 PM

Is there a program out there that will turn on my computer for me?

My computer is running Windows XP SP2 and is a Pentium IV Dell. Anyway, this computer is located at a remote location, and needs to be on most of the time so I can access it. The problem is that if the power goes out (which it does about once a month) I need it to start up again within 24 hours. It's a fairly old computer, and there is a setting in the bios to start the computer at a certain time, but it doesn't work.

Any ideas?

posted by jModug to computers & internet (9 comments total)

There's also usually a BIOS option that just says, when the power comes back, revert to this state (on or off). Other than that, you'd need something to physically switch the power on. A "program" implies that the computer's already on, which it isn't. :)

Which BIOS does it have?
posted by knave at 6:54 PM on February 8, 2008

Only way to do it is in the BIOS. It needs to either support an automated power on setting or, failing that, Wake-On-Lan which would require a specific packet sent to the machine to wake it up.

I'd be surprised if the BIOS didn't support scheduled power on. Set it for 6am.
posted by purephase at 7:00 PM on February 8, 2008

There are hardware solutions that would give you remote control of the computer's power but I think they'd be more expensive than an old computer.

Do you only use it during the day? Can it be set up to turn on when it gets power? If so you could get a simple mechanical switch that would turn it off every night and turn it on every morning. (Or maybe just setting it to turn on when it gets power solves the problem, if that's possible.)
posted by XMLicious at 7:09 PM on February 8, 2008

Test and see if it will boot on power. I have a 'wakeonlan' script to send the magic packet to wake up a sleeping machine on the network. It's in Perl, but pretty simple to port. Email if needed.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:35 PM on February 8, 2008

# The 'magic packet' consists of 6 times 0xFF followed by 16 times
# the hardware address of the NIC. This sequence can be encapsulated
# in any kind of packet, in this case UDP to the discard port (9).
posted by zengargoyle at 7:38 PM on February 8, 2008 [1 favorite]

The standard trick on an ATX PSU is to strap pins 14 (Power On ) & 15 (Gnd) on the PSU motherboard connector together. This is the normal signalling between the motherboard & PSU.

The other trick which sometimes works, depending on the motherboard, is to stick a 1uF ~ 100uF capacitor across the soft power switch. When the PSUs +5v standby power line comes back on, the motherboard's power-on circuit powers up, and the short pulse provided by the cap acts like pressing the switch.

(The reason you can't just short the soft power switch is because the m'board sees a long press as being "Power Down".)
posted by Pinback at 8:51 PM on February 8, 2008

Google 'wakeonlan.' This wont work over wireless.

Disable all the ACPI power crap and put in a hard ON switch. For bonus points buy one of these and turn it on by calling it with something like this.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:02 PM on February 8, 2008

Previously. (Have a cheap spare computer?)
posted by CrunchyFrog at 9:30 PM on February 8, 2008

The windows scheduler can start the computer if it is off in order to run a scheduled job, which could just be an empty batch file. The thing is, I thinknit uses the same mechanism as the BIOS does, so you should focus on diagnosing that problem a bit more. If you can't get that working, I have my doughts you'll be able to get wake on LAN working either.
posted by Good Brain at 10:40 AM on February 10, 2008