The power switch on my Lenovo desktop was acting up.
For the last couple of weeks, powering on my desktop computer in the morning was an adventure. It seems the power switch has started to wear out and it was taking a few tries to turn on the computer.
This particular desktop computer has been powered on a total of 1,356 times, you would think the power switch would last a bit longer.
Rather than replacing the soon to fail power switch, I began looking for alternatives. Putting the computer to sleep would still require me to press the power switch to wake it up. Leaving the computer on all the time is not an option, especially in the hot summer months. Then I happened on the Wake on Lan bios option.
Wake on Lan allows you to wake up a computer via it’s Ethernet connection, as long as it’s listening. Powering off Lenovo proved that it still had an active connection to my router, indicated by the glowing port light. Powered it back up, went into the bios and enabled the Wake on Lan setting.
Now, how do I turn on the computer via this new enabled feature? Well it so happens that my trusty WRT54GL router running Tomato has this capability under the Tools menu. Time to test, turn off the computer, open up the router page on my tablet, press on the computer’s mac address, and I hear Windows starting up.
My tablet sits on my nightstand at night, in the morning I reach over and power on the desktop. By the time I reach my home office, the computer has gone through all it’s start up routines and is ready for me to sign on. The power switch gets a reprieve, I should of done this from the start.
When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?