Precision 3660 WOL does not work

Question

New Precision 3660 and trying to set up for Wake-on-lan. Changed the BIOS to disable deep sleep in S4 and S5. The machine turn on with the WOL magic packet if the computer is powered off, but it never succeeds if the computer is in sleep. When it is in sleep, the WOL signal does something (I hear the relay/click from the power supply) and the hard drive light flashes, and the LAN card is active and has IP address because RDP will try and connect - but the power light never comes on the PC, I hear another relay click as if power supply is going back off, and eventually I get an error message about licensing from the rdp client.

I think this is related to the really strange behavior of trying to wake the machine from sleep locally: if I press a key on the keyboard, the same power supply click as if it's going to come on happens, but the machine doesn't wake up. It takes pressing the keyboard key at least two, sometimes more times for it to actually fully wake up. I have repeated this test over and over and it is always the same - at least two keyboard presses to wake up - one is not enough.

I've tried sending multiple WOL magic packets, but that doesn't help.

I have updated the BIOS, Windows update, checked every setting and am unable to resolve this issue.

RichieBD · Accepted Answer

I have 'solved' the issue - basically, Wake-on-Lan works from a power-off state as long as BIOS settings are correct (it has to be enabled in BIOS, and deep sleep in S4/S5 cannot be enabled), and assuming the network adapter settings (to allow wake on magic packet) are set in Windows. My problem was waking from sleep - and the issue really is that sleep on this machine is not S3 - standby that I was very familiar with, but S0 - 'Modern' sleep. And I will say that for all practical purposes, wake-on-lan will not work with modern sleep, and modern sleep isn't at all what I would call sleep. The research I've done (with smart plug 5-second true power monitoring - Emporia smart plug) shows the PC will never really sleep (which I define as going into a ultra-lower power state preserving RAM and machine state only) and even if the registry changes are made to disable Modern connected sleep, the PC still will never sleep if almost any application is running. The PC will use nearly as much power as when I'm using it in normal operation in this modern sleep. This should be a crime - this push to everything always on/always connected, can't turn it off is ridiculous and contributes to the global climate crisis. So, my solution is: I've enabled hibernation and S4 is sleep, and I have totally disabled S0 sleep (registry entry:: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power: Dword: PlatformAoAcOverride  Value:0) and set the PC to hibernate after [20] minutes. It takes about 20 seconds to resume from hibernation, which isn't as good as the 5 or so seconds I'd expect from S3, but it's the only thing that will work for me. And, despite instructions that say Wake-on-lan will not work with S4/hibernation enabled, it works just fine. I can do WoL to re-start from power off (S5) or hibernation (S4).  [I didn't expect WoL to work from S4, so my plan was to use the BIOS setting to boot after loss of power and use the smart power switch to disconnect AC after hibernating the machine - then could remotely restart the machine by turning the smart switch back on.)

bradthetechnut · Answer

Might have to pursue as a warranty issue.  It doesn't sound like you should be hearing clicks from the PSU.

RichieBD · Answer

More information: The 'click' appears to be a relay in the 500 watt plantinum psu, not abnormal.
The click happens whenever the LED on the psu comes on or goes off. The WOL signal when the computer is asleep (the PSU led is off as is power button LED) triggers the PSU led, the power button LED stays off, but a power meter shows the PC has gone from a lower power (about 2W) to active (30-60Watts) state even though the computer is non-responsive, screens stay off, nothing works. After 30 seconds or so, another click, the psu LED goes off and power draw goes back to about 2W. When the computer is OFF (shutdown), power draw is less than 1 watt, and the WOL signal works to boot computer.
What I found: if I change the BIOS - Power settings to enable USB wake, the WOL signal will wake the machine from sleep - however, just about anything will wake the machine as well which is undesirable - a touch on keyboard, slight move of the mouse, unplug the network cable, connect a display cable, etc. And, what's even worse, with this setting on despite the text that says that only the powershare USB port will turn the computer on when it was Shutdown is incorrect - simply pressing a key on USB keyboard attached to any USB type A port on the machine starts the machine from power off when this setting is on! Not at all desirable.

RichieBD · Answer

Even more info: my searching shows many problems with Modern Sleep - S0 state, and apparently that is the only sleep state that the 3660 supports? Even though the BIOS setup mentions S3 (classic sleep). This modern sleep isn't sleep at all - it allows the computer to do things at full power. When it's sleeping, the main monitor goes back and forth between off and a full power on state, even though nothing ever shows on the display except the display's power LED light changes, and then after some seconds displays No Video message and the power light goes back off.

I found from command prompt: powercfg /a will display the available sleep states. The machine reports that S1, S2 and S3 are not supported by the system firmware. S0 is the only sleep state allowed. Hibernate is supported, but I have to turn it off for WOL to work at all. That leaves me with only S0 and the default is S0 Low Power Idle with Network Connected. And the computer runs most of the time, and my power meter shows it using a lot of power, I have no idea what it's doing while sleeping but I don't want it doing anything except wait for me to tell it when to wake up.

So, I was able to fix that by adding registry entry to
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power
Add Dword: EnforceDisconnectedStandby Value:1

With this set, computer goes to low power (<2W), and

powercfg /a from command prompt yields:

C:\>powercfg /a
The following sleep states are available on this system:
    Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Disconnected

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
    Standby (S1)
        The system firmware does not support this standby state.
        This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

    Standby (S2)
        The system firmware does not support this standby state.
        This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

    Standby (S3)
        The system firmware does not support this standby state.
        This standby state is disabled when S0 low power idle is supported.

    Hibernate
        Hibernation has not been enabled.

    Hybrid Sleep
        Standby (S3) is not available.
        Hibernation is not available.

    Fast Startup
        Hibernation is not available.

    Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Connected
        Connectivity in standby is not supported.

With this setting, WOL still works from power OFF. Doesn't work from sleep. Dell & Microsoft have lot of work to do to fix this.

s4589632 · Answer

Do you happen to have an i225 add-in network card? there's an issue that Wake on Lan function would fail for i225, which is an intel issue.

bradthetechnut · Answer

@RichieBD, Glad you got it working!!  : )  What a complex.  : )>

KlykoN · Answer

We've ordered many 3660's in our company and unfortunately this has become a pretty annoying issue where we basically now got a symphony of clicking 3660's in different areas. It would be nice of Dell to patch these problems. Would also like to thank everyone for work around solutions for this case.

jackal365 · Answer

时隔一年之后, 购买的最新生产的T3660,刷新了最新的BIOS,仍然碰到了完全相同的问题。
可以在断电的情况下WOL，但是却无法在睡眠状态下唤醒。
看起来DELL并没有能解决这个问题。
技术支持也没有能够解决这个问题，并可笑地在多次测试各种方法之后，确定给我更换主板。更可笑的是，在经过将近1个月的等待时间（是的，你没有看错，这就是现在DELL的物流速度，40天之后才有主板），更换主板后，问题仍然存在！！

After a year, the newly produced T3660 purchased had the latest BIOS refreshed and still encountered the exact same problem.

WOL can be performed in the event of a power outage, but cannot be awakened during sleep.

It seems that DELL has not been able to solve this problem.

Technical support also failed to solve this problem, and after repeatedly testing various methods, it was ridiculous to decide to replace the motherboard for me. What's even more ridiculous is that after nearly a month of waiting time (yes, you're not mistaken, that's the current logistics speed of DELL, and it takes 40 days for the motherboard to arrive), the problem still exists after replacing the motherboard!!

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Precision 3660 WOL does not work

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