Trying to make Remote Desktop connection work

Just making sure I didn't miss anything here. So, can you wake a win7 machine from sleep using Remote Desktop Connection? I've got all the WOL (Wake on Lans) stuff enabled, all the way from power management to keep juice running to the network adapter card, to enabling WOL in the advanced settings of the network adapter, and also checking to make sure it's enabled in the BIOS. I haven't done any of that "magic packet" stuff yet. I have successfully accessed the host computer via RDC from my laptop, but I was doing it at home and I just realized my laptop wakes up the host anytime I turn it on because it's on the network with it (that's okay for me). MS RDC official help says RDC doesn't work when PC is in Sleep mode. But I just get confused about all this "WOL" stuff. What good is "WOL" if you can't wake up a computer using RDC? That being said, WOL works fine for my home network.

Update. I've set sleep to "never" and I'm still unable to access host. Be advised the Host is runnng win 7 professional, and the remote computer is running XP Pro with win 7. I have my RDC setting on the host to allow connections from all RDCs.

Thanks in advance,
W!

 

I don't really have experience with Wake on LAN, but I believe you're trying to compare apples to oranges. I believe Wake on LAN implementations require a "Magic Packet" which is sent to the MAC address of the NIC. This is something completely different from Terminal Services (the base for Remote Desktop) which is a Windows based service that listens on TCP port 3389. We are talking about different layers of the OSI model here. RDP won't work without the Windows being up because both TCP/IP and Terminal Services are plugged into the operating system and, therefore, could not be used to "wake up" the computer. If I'm off-base on this one, I'm hoping someone else who has experience with Wake on LAN will chime in and correct me.

 

I'm confused..

then you say

Which is it?

WOL is its own thing just as RDP is it's own thing.
WOL (as others have said) uses a 'magic packet' to wake a computer from sleep or powered off, once the computer is awake the next thing is what you want to do with it, in this case RDP.
Softperfect Network Scanner has a WOL ability as well as any router running DD-WRT so you can remote to your router and wake a PC when your away from the PC.
Read more at
http://lifehacker.com/348197/access-your-computer-anytime-and-save-energy-with-wake+on+lan

 

Psst: foogoo & rickyaliasgar - look at the date of the original post: 01-26-10...I'm just sayin'...