How to Send a Wake on LAN Command

Wake on LAN (WOL), is a technology that turns on a computer without you being physically present at the computer. A WOL command broadcasts a specially formed network message called a magic packet to all computers on the same network segment as the target computer. Each computer's network card is uniquely identifiable by its Media Access Control (MAC) address. Only the computer that has the target MAC address will respond by signaling the motherboard to power on the computer. The WOL command-line utility by Matcode is one of many utilities that can send a WOL command.

A WOL-compliant netowrk card can receive a magic packet and signal the motherboard to power on the computer.

Use Matcode's Wake-on-LAN Command Line Utility to Send a WOL Command

Step

Open the Web browser on the host computer and go to Matcode's WOL Web page (see Resources).

Step

Click the "Download MC-WOL.EXE" link at the bottom of the page and save the MC-WOL.exe file to a location on the local hard drive, such as C:\Temp.

Step

Open the Windows command prompt by clicking "Start" and "Run." Type "CMD" into the dialog box and click the "OK" button.

Step

Type the following command into the command prompt. Replacewith the path where you saved the "MC-WOL.exe" file, such as C:\Temp. Replacewith the MAC address of the target computer's network address, such as A1:B2:C3:D4:E5:F6.

\MC-WOL

Step

Press "Enter." A magic packet is sent to all computers, with the target computer responding to it by powering on.