A few questions on Power Management (and by the way, it would be nice to have this as its own group on the forum).
In this task - Enable All Input Devices to Allow Wake from Standby - Windows XP/Vista.
Would anyone know why new PC’s might not have the option to do so. Is it in the BIOS or a driver issue? In this case, it is a Lenovo PC and older Lenovo’s that we have do have this ability.
Also, I noticed that the applicabilie computer count for this task never seems to go down (even though the task is run successfully)
If you look at the relevance for the task, you’ll see that the task will always be applicable. I believe it’s because there is no way to query the “Allow Wake from Standby” setting using relevance. If you look at the action script of this task, it’s all done by executing a powercfg.exe command and parsing the output. Therefore, you probably shouldn’t set this action to automatically reapply when it becomes relevant again.
I’m not sure why your new PC’s are missing the Power Management tab for input devices. It could be a power management setting in the BIOS. You could also try running the “Maximize Power Reduction when in Standby Mode” and “Set Sleep State to S3 when USB Devices are Present” tasks.
It was this task that fixed the issue - “Set Sleep State to S3 when USB Devices are Present” I had to stop this task on some laptops as it was causing a blue screen on Lenovo W700’s.
On another note, does anyone know what the difference between these 2 tasks are:
BES Client Setting: EnableWakeOnLanForwarding versus Enable Wake-from-Standby by Magic Packet - Windows XP
And does anyone know why the Power Mangement feature on the NIC does not show up when a user logs on a desktop/laptop with an account without admin privelages yet it will show when a user with admin privelages logs on (pic attached). The PC can be taken out of Standby via the right-click option in any case.
The Task “BES Client Setting: EnableWakeOnLanForwarding” is to set BES Client computers to wake up their neighbors. You need to do this to get BigFix-based WoL to work properly.
The Task “Enable Wake-from-Standby by Magic Packet - Windows XP” will set the computer to wake up from standby if it receives a WoL packet. This effectively checks the boxes in that picture you posted above. If you don’t do this, your computers will not wake-up from standby.
For your question about the power management tab, I believe it is a requirement in Windows that you need to be an admin to change whether the adapter will wake the computer up.
Can you explain then why if I have not deployed this action - “BES Client Setting: EnableWakeOnLanForwarding” but only deployed this action “Enable Wake-from-Standby by Magic Packet - Windows XP” does the right click WOL work?
I have been using the right-click option for many months now and works like a charm. I’m just trying to use the Wizard a little more for schedule wake-ups and this is where the questions arise from.
WoL packets are broadcast and need to be sent from the same subnet as the “to-be-woken” computer. If any computer in the subnet is a last-man-standing or a wake-on-lan forwarder, then it will wake up properly. If no computer in the subnet is around to forward the WoL packets, then the computer won’t wake up.
I’m quite aware of this and have been using WOL effectively via the right-click option. But my question still stands, I have NOT deployed this action “BES Client Setting: EnableWakeOnLanForwarding”. I have only deployed this action “Enable Wake-from-Standby by Magic Packet - Windows XP” . So, having said what you saud, why does the right-click option still work?
My BES Server is not on the same subnet and in some cases, actually many in fact, they do not have a local bes relay. We don’t allow multicast either across routers so this is not a network configuration. What I am trying to say is that I think these tasks are redundant. When I initially implemented PM, I don’t even recall this task “BES Client Setting: EnableWakeOnLanForwarding”.
They are definitely different and important tasks… You can look at the actions and see that one configures the BigFix Agent and one configures the underlying OS…
But there is a different Task on the BigFix Power Management site that is called “Designate Wake-on-LAN Forwarders”. This Task effectively does the same thing as the Task on the BES Support site: “BES Client Setting: EnableWakeOnLanForwarding”.