Intel Communities: Message List

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 29 May 2012 17:47:51 GMT

HA!

I'm trying to refrain from celebrating until it's been a few days with no wakes, but I think I FINALLY found the answer. I'll document it in case some other poor soul has this problem and googles it.

In the BIOS menu there's an option to display the Intel ME prompt during boot. It's together with the options to display F2 to enter setup, F10 to enter boot menu, and so on. I enabled it just to see what it was. Upon restart, sure enough, right at the end of the POST there's a prompt to press CTRL+P to enter Intel ME. I did. Apparently it's kind of an extension to the BIOS menus. Among the few items inside, there was a "remote wake up" thing which was set to Enabled. I set it to Disabled. Now the computer doesn't reply to pings when it's sleeping. As I said, it will be a couple of days until I can be sure that I've solved the problem, but it does look promising.

I have to say, this Intel ME thing (I think it's Management Engine) is not documented anywhere, nobody seems to know about it, and why Intel put those options there instead of in the BIOS menus with the rest, is beyond me. Even the prompt to enter Intel ME is disabled by default, I was lucky to stumble upon it after trying everything.

Anyway, I hope it works permanently. I would like to thank everyone for your suggestions, especially rseiler. I may have ended solving the problem by myself (hopefully!), but I appreciate the time you took to contribute. I'll let you know if there are any news, or I'll mark the question as answered in a couple of days.

Ta ta!

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 29 May 2012 00:35:53 GMT

I'm pretty sure that it won't wake up from shutdown. I haven't tried hibernation. Still, I'd rather plug/unplug the cable every time instead of waiting for the computer to come out of hibernation or boot, open the applications again, etc. Sleep mode is great: back on in under 5 seconds, everything exactly as it was.

A possible solution would be to use an add-on NIC, I think I have one somewhere. But it annoys me that I don't know what the hell is causing it. By now I'd say a faulty board, but exactly the same happened with a previous, different board. I've run out of ideas.

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 28 May 2012 14:09:43 GMT

I booted a "Live GNOME" CD of openSUSE 12.1, put the computer to sleep, and it woke up when I pinged it. So I guess it comes down to hardware or BIOS.

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 28 May 2012 01:17:22 GMT

Nah, just pulling the network cable is easier. Thanks for the tip, though!

I've been using and working with computers for about 25 years now. I think that this is the first time that a problem has bested me to the point of not even knowing what is causing it. Different motherboards (hence different NICs), different installations and different versions of Windows, different NIC drivers with different settings. It's practically different computers having the same issue, since no relevant component has remained unchanged.

Maybe some day I'll re-install Windows and see if it happens on a fresh installation with nothing else. Then add applications one by one. But I can't think of any application that would do that, and it would still be strange that an application can override OS and BIOS settings. I could also try a "live" boot of Linux, if those can be put to sleep. If it happens then, it would pretty much narrow it down to hardware. I think that's what I'll try next.

Thanks again!

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 27 May 2012 23:28:19 GMT

Yep, eventually woke up by a ping from the other computer.

I don't know what else there is to try. I keep thinking that it must be something unique to my system, otherwise it would be a widespread problem. But everything about my system is rather common. Intel board with onboard NIC, Windows 7 with various NIC drivers and settings, popular applications.

I guess I'll have to keep disconnecting the network cable every time, annoying as that may be.

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 27 May 2012 21:57:09 GMT

Yep, it's revision 1.12.04A. Anyway, a problem with the router or any other external factor could only worsen a problem with the computer itself. If I set the computer to not wake up on LAN, it shouldn't matter what other devices do, right?

I'm using Intel's NIC driver now. I can set "Wake on Settings" to "OS controlled" and then uncheck "Allow this device to wake the computer". That will cause "Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer" to be checked and grayed out. Or I can set "Wake on Settings" to "Disabled", which makes the other settings unavailable. It has woken up with either combination.

Yesterday I changed the computer from port 1 to port 4 on the router. Then I tried waking it up a couple of times by turning the LocationFree on and off, then I left if sleeping and connected overnight. It didn't wake up. It will likely wake up eventually, though. As I said, if the computer was working right, what happens outside the NIC should be irrelevant.

Thank you again for your time and effort

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 27 May 2012 13:32:05 GMT

Correction: the settings on the LocationFree make no difference.

I connected another computer to the network and used it to try to open http://192.168.1.3 (the private IP address of the sleeping computer) with the browser. Lo and behold, the sleeping computer woke up. So it seems that any communication directed to the computer's private IP address may wake it up, but not always. The sleeping computer replies to pings, but pinging it doesn't wake it up, or at least it never did in the times I tried.

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Sat, 26 May 2012 05:44:14 GMT

I think I got it!

I turned off the LocationFree base station and put the computer to sleep while I did some stuff. Several minutes later I needed to use the computer again, so I turned on the LocationFree and, wouldn't you know it, the computer woke up immediately. I tried it a couple more times and, indeed, turning on the LocationFree while the computer was sleeping caused it to wake up. I had found the culprit.

I turned off the settings that allow the LocationFree base station to connect to the Internet (so as to stream video over the 'net) and now the problem appears to have been fixed. I'll see what happens over the next couple of days when I leave the computer sleeping overnight, but at least turning on the station doesn't wake up the computer anymore.

The question remains as to why that device is waking up the computer if I have set all WoL configurations to off. Streaming over the Internet happens to be a feature that I don't use, but if I did, I'd still have a problem. As far as I can tell, there are no background processes or services related to LocationFree running on my computer, and I used LocationFree with the Asus board and didn't have this problem, so maybe it's the specific combination of the LocationFree and some bug with the Intel boards, or something.

At least I've solved my problem, I hope.

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:45:56 GMT

I'll copy it exactly the next time that it wakes up by itself, but basically it shows no device.

Re: LAN wakes up computer, no matter what I do

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:12:47 GMT

Here's an update:

The computer did eventually wake up by itself after my last post. That was using Windows' included NIC driver instead of Intel's, and unchecking "Allow this device to wake up the computer".

Next, I downloaded the driver provided by rseiler, v17.1, which was the first driver to include the "Wake on" and "Wake on Link" settings in the Advanced tab of the NIC preferences. I set both to Disabled, as per the release notes. Computer woke up by itself. I should clarify that the driver download page for the DP43TF lists an older driver version as the latest NIC driver, so that's the one I had before.

I checked the lease time. It was set in the router to 1 day, although the computer actually had the lease time as around 1.5 days, and it certainly woke up before the expiration date/time. I set the lease time to a week. The computer now reports the expiration date as June 1, so if it wakes up before then, it will definitely rule that out as the cause.

At this time, the only other devices on the network are the router (3Com 3CRWDR101A-75) and a Sony LocationFree (used to stream TV through the network).

I scanned the computer with Trend Micro's HouseCall antivirus, in addition to Microsoft Security Essentials which is running full time. No malware detected.

Next I'm going to try installing driver v17.1 as a full install instead of "driver only" (which I did by unpacking the .exe with WinRAR and then having Device Manager look for a driver there), to see if it has any relevant settings. I will also turn off the LocationFree device next time I put the computer to sleep.

I'll let you know what happens. Thanks everyone for your contributions!

Diego