Powering workstations on/off - central control

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

I'm looking for a simple way of powering up/down workstations on our Windows network according to a pre-defined schedule. So, for example, I can set one suite to power down after the school day and then back up again early in the morning in time to run scans and updates etc. Another suite might be set up similarly but with a later power up time. etc.

 

I've searched for a tool to do this but without success so I've had a quick look at writing something myself and that seems a goer but, as ever with development projects, quite a lot of work. So, before I bury my head in that, anyone know of anything that'll do the job?

 

Ta, Ian.

[rjones]

Hi Ian,

 

I have tried many different tools / utilites to perform this task and still probably the most flexible way I have found is to write a v. simple script and then use scheduled task to set what times you would like them to start up and shutdown.

 

As you probably already know you need to ensure that your machines support wake on LAN and the shutdown.exe command build in to windows works well!

[IanIsBaffledAgain]

Thanks for getting back rjones. What do you use to trigger the start up? I have a thing called WOL - Magic Packet Sender but it's GUI-driven only as far as I'm aware so I can't easily see how to invoke it (with parameters) from the command line.

 

Cheers, Ian.

[mac_shinobi]

Thanks for getting back rjones. What do you use to trigger the start up? I have a thing called WOL - Magic Packet Sender but it's GUI-driven only as far as I'm aware so I can't easily see how to invoke it (with parameters) from the command line.

 

Cheers, Ian.

 

WOL depends on a few things

 

1. for each computer to have it enabled in the bios

2. for the network cards in the computers to support it and be enabled on the network card to accept the *magic packets*

3. Some computers may require bios updates possibly ( not sure )

 

Possibly a few other things but can't remember all the info off the top of my head

 

AB Tutor I think ( If someone could verify this ) has the feature to wake up and shutdown computers ( again this may be similar to WOL with ref to requirements )

[p858snake]

AB Tutor I think ( If someone could verify this ) has the feature to wake up and shutdown computers ( again this may be similar to WOL with ref to requirements )

AbTutor just has a wrapper to issue the WOL commands.

[mac_shinobi]

AbTutor just has a wrapper to issue the WOL commands.

 

I was thinking thats what it would be and am sure other gui's / apps do the same.

 

Thanks for confirming that

[rjones]

Hi Ian,

 

This is how i acheived it... there could be other ways, but it works for me!!

 

The script needs to copy the WOLCMD.exe to the windows directory on the client machine and then the following ----

 

WOLCMD mac address Client IP ADDRESS Subnet Mask 7

 

Do this for each machine you wish to start up.

 

Sorry for the red and black... trying to make it clear!!

 

Hope this helps

 

Edited October 27, 2009 by rjones

[gshaw]

If you need a quick way to harvest the IP \ MAC addresses of the workstations look for Angry IP Scanner, it'll do an export to a text file which you can then format as required to make a WOL batch file for each room \ department etc

[K.C.Leblanc]

If you need a quick way to harvest the IP \ MAC addresses of the workstations look for Angry IP Scanner, it'll do an export to a text file which you can then format as required to make a WOL batch file for each room \ department etc

 

FastResolver will do the same thing, plus it'll work from a list of host names. It will however do some odd things if you've got stale DNS records.

 

I've created a spreadsheet of host names and mac addresses in excel and then used the CONCATENATE to create any scripts I need. The only headache I had was with wol.exe. It needs mac addresses without hyphens, ented up usign the function =CONCATENATE("wol ",REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(B25,3,1,""),5,1,""),7,1,""),9,1,""),11,1,"")).

 

I'm sure there's a better way to do it.

Edited October 28, 2009 by K.C.Leblanc