Powering on machines.....

[mrbios]

Does anyone have any good suggestions on powering up PCs without the use of an actual power switch connected to the motherboard?

 

I've looked into power on on keyboard press but this only seems to apply to USB keyboards (same with the power on by mouse)

 

I've looked into WOL, there seems to be only a few programs ive found that actually work on a subnetted network and the only decent ones seem to cost money

 

Our PCs are a little different to the conventional schools, we have the PCs mounted on boards and hidden in cupboards instead of cases so currently we have power switches onto the 2 pins on the board and there just hidden in the boxes......not very fun when we have to go around turning PCs on (there all set to boot on power fail which works 95% of the time but we want to be able to shut everything down over holidays/night time and then just power it all back on in the morning without the fuss of having to open up the boxes)

[webman]

Some BIOSs have a page in the CMOS setup utility where you can specify the machine to power on at a certain time.

[mrbios]

I've had a look at that but the boards we have only seem to let us specify turning on at a certain time at a certain day of the month, i've tried it set to zero to see if that would apply it to every day but it doesnt seem to work

[mpe]

Does anyone have any good suggestions on powering up PCs without the use of an actual power switch connected to the motherboard?

 

I've looked into power on on keyboard press but this only seems to apply to USB keyboards (same with the power on by mouse)

It depends on the keyboard, I've seen these on PS/2 keyboards. One possible problem with USB is that some boards completly power down their USB ports when in standby.

 

I've looked into WOL, there seems to be only a few programs ive found that actually work on a subnetted network and the only decent ones seem to cost money

Depends what OS you are using...

[mpe]

I've had a look at that but the boards we have only seem to let us specify turning on at a certain time at a certain day of the month, i've tried it set to zero to see if that would apply it to every day but it doesnt seem to work

Even if it did you'd probably only want it to turn on mondays to fridays

[danrhodes]

Yep, I agree with Gibbo WOL is your best road to go down I use it at work and also at home to turn my cluster pc's on :-)

 

D

[mrbios]

It depends on the keyboard, I've seen these on PS/2 keyboards. One possible problem with USB is that some boards completly power down their USB ports when in standby.

 

I know some keyboards have actual power buttons (which i hate) but this was powering on my pressing any key or an assigned key, im assuming there isnt any way around the USB power issue short of plugging the keyboards into the PS2 ports with those annoying little adapters seeing as no one seems to be able to suggest anything on that front?

 

Windows XP SP2 is the OS of choice here

 

Even if it did you'd probably only want it to turn on mondays to fridays

 

haha i forgot about that

[Azhibberd]

mrbios sounds like you have the same kind of setup we are currently running on are two new IT rooms, All the pcs boxed away, hard glass monitors attached to the front (very hard to damage), either side of the room are cctv cameras which are motion sensitive to record Jpeg's on movement using a program called icatcher. Lucky enough are mobo's we have set them to auto start at 8:30 monday-friday and run a shutdown script at 5 to shutdown all the pc's (First problem we had was kids realised they could shutdown the pc from the logon screen so after a resource hack we removed the shutdown button for them. But in the rare case when pcs do shutdown we use a program called Specops GPupdate which is free (and works with subnet's networks) Specops Gpupdate - Remote gpupdate / Wake on lan (WOL) / restart / shutdown , This way we don't have to worry about having any power buttons available, So far these rooms have been in use since the 6 weeks off and there hasn't been any damage so seems to be worth it.

 

Aaron

[User3204]

We have our machines set to power up after "power loss" in the BIOS.

We also have all computer rooms fitted with the emergency stop buttons (although I'm trying to get these changed to key switches).

 

We turn off machines properly, and then turn off the power for the room, so when we turn the power back on for the room, the machines all power back on. You could get the same effect by flicking they trip-switch off and on, but I wouldn't recommend it.

[Azhibberd]

Ye we also run the if power fails return to previous state, but nice idea about the power switches although not fully automated really but nice idea.

[mrbios]

cheers azhibberd i'll take a look at that program tomorrow

 

The power on if power fails we use, in 2 rooms the teachers flick the main power switch off as they go out (without shutting the PCs down properly, which isnt the best solution in the world!) and they have been doing that for about 2 years now with minimal fuss, but our newest building doesn't have that facility (we could flick the trip switches which are in an office between the 2 rooms in question but i don't think there designed for constant use)

 

The biggest problem we're having with our new building is the amount of heat thats generated in there, there is no air conditioning as its supposedly meant to cool itself using temperature operated windows...... the idiots that designed it didn't think about the heat the PCs put out....they also didn't think about rain (when it rains if the windows open it rains onto our monitors )

 

Then again i was saying that as the building was being built, i have carried on saying heat is a problem since it was finished over a year ago, still nothings being done about it so trying to find some cheap simple temporary solutions until someone notices its costing us alot of money and time in overheating/dieing hard drives!

[Azhibberd]

just to let you know that program integrates its self with AD on that machine so you need to have the administrator pack on that machine first and ye not really the best way to shut them down regularly, at the moment we just use a batch script with the shutdown command from one of the servers, and for things like the holidays we just set it to shutdown all the pcs 10 mins after they auto boot on. Also i agree i wouldn't constantly start flickin about with trip switches, we have one room where they had a great idea of putting the trip switches right by the door and well the amount of times a kid just walks off in a bad mood and just flips them all, which also has a habbit of tripping a main fuse... O joy....

 

Ye gotta love it... most of the time when a building is being built the IT team is normally left out of the design and only asked when they realise they want something IT in there....we have been waiting for around 3 years for cooling for one of are IT rooms So hoe you have more luck than we do!

[mrbios]

Gave that software a test run, we're so impressed we're going to get the licensed remote admin version

 

Thank you very much Azhibberd for that software recommendation