Turning on Computer Remotely

[nat_wheatley]

Anyone know of a straightforward series of steps for doing this? I'd like to be able to turn my shop computer on, from my house computer. At the moment I leave the shop computer on all the time, which isn't ideal as the computer kicks out an absurd amount of heat, for some reason, which can't be good in terms of wear and tear.

I've searched online, a number of times, for the steps to do this and without fail get bogged down on one step or another...

[adrianm]

Presumably they're networked and you want to turn the shop computer on so you can transfer files from the house computer?

If so the easiest way is to enable the Wake On LAN feature (if your computer supports it, most reasonably modern ones do).

That way you hibernate or sleep the shop computer which will use a great deal less power than having it running for "real". You can then connect to it over the network and it will spring into life.

I used to run my setup exactly like that until I went through issues with my wi-fi. Now that's all sorted I may well do it again as it was so convenient.

[sailfl]

It is actually better to leave the computer on. If you are worried about heat, add more cooling.

[nat_wheatley]

They are networked. Just spent about another 1 1/2 hours trying to set it up. Will give it a little more time later today,

[zeykr]

There are a number of products to allow rebooting servers remotely in case normal control fails. Either by telephone or IP. I'm not up to date on them anymore but here is one I found in a quick search for remote server power switch

http://www.digital-loggers.com/lpc.html?gclid=CIebu_706LcCFe3m7Aod-VsA1g

[dana_swift]

I respectively disagree with Nils - turn the computer off. A computer is not a lamp, it has no inrush current or other destructive force associated with power up. Should there be such an issue, please direct me to a definitive source for engineering info.

Powering down, flushes all the caches, synchronizes the disk system, etc.

Adrian is correct- wake on LAN is easy to implement and does just what is desired! The setting to enable the feature may be under your bios settings when you boot the computer. Another reason to turn it off!

D

[myxpykalix]

I agree with Dana that it's always better to power down the computer. Chances are you are not in a airconditioned building with your bot which is going to add to the heat.
I have found that because i just put my inside computer "to sleep" when i get done trolling the net after a few days it is so slow that i have to reboot to clear out all the memory, ect plus i think there is probably apps that continually run in the background that do some kind of checking that probably takes up memory.

Does anyone know of a good app to flush out the computer to make it run faster? I've got Ccleaner and it helps some but it is getting rediculous.:confused: