Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Wakiewakie v1.44 - a more comfortable WOL tool for Windows

I've updated Wakiewakie to v1.44. On some laptops Windows was reporting a successful ping even before a network connection was properly established. The new 'all' parameter fixes that.

If you need a comfortable WOL tool for Windows, Wakiewakie might just be it.


Background

Wakiewakie is now in daily use since 2013 or so, and serves its purpose fine. Which is: send WOL messages and indicate how long things will take.

For example: I have a homeserver, which (when not in use) sleeps. When I want to access it from a client PC I need to...

  1. Check if my client PC has a valid IP address (handy on a Wifi network)
  2. Check if I can reach some always on device (for example a router, again for Wifi networks)
  3. Send a WOL to the server
  4. Check if I can reach (ping) the server

Wakiewakie takes care of all of the above.

I also added some indicators to show current status and progress, which is great for kids and spouses, so they have some indication how long they still have to wait.


Comfortable

Waiting for something to start is annoying. Wakiewakie keeps track of previous starts and displays a progress bar accordingly. You can define the background color to have it match your color scheme 😇



Use

Just start it, fill in the fields, and Wakiewakie will create a shortcut on your desktop. Double click the shortcut and your server wakes up.

Once you have verified the basic functionality start reading the included documentation and play around a bit with the command line options. (You can enter those in the 'other' field in newer versions.) See included documentation.



My command line looks something like this:

wakiewakie.exe history adapter 10.172.*.* router 10.172.0.99 server 10.172.0.4 mac D5:5E:99:48:11:9F color $FFFFFF $000080 linger 1200 retry 500 all


Information and download

Original page:

http://www.ninelizards.com/purebasic/purebasic%2029.htm#wakiewakie

Direct download link:

http://www.ninelizards.com/purebasic/wakiewakie.zip


VirtualBox users please note

VirtualBox blocks sending out WOL packets if you have defined an adapter under Host Network Manager / Host Only Adapter. Remove that entry and things work fine. This doesn't only apply to Wakiewakie but to most WOL tools.


Windows 10 does not reply to a ping 

By default Windows 10 does not reply to a ping (ICMP v4 echo request) so you need to enable that for the local network.

To do so:


  1. Settings
  2. Windows Defender Firewall
  3. Advanced Settings
  4. Inbound Rules
  5. New Rule
  6. Protocol and Ports
  7. Protocol type: ICMPv4
  8. Optional: Customize for specific messages (sometimes causes trouble)
  9. Scope: any / any (modify as required)
  10. Action: no changes
  11. Profile: tick Domain and Private, untick Public
  12. Name: ICMPv4 Echo (or whatever you like)











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