Ethernet card question

[BTB 500]

I have just switched from wireless to Powerline 'ethernet over mains' adapters:

dLAN® 200 AVeasy ... Product description ... devolo AG

One small thing that I am curious about.

The adapters are designed to go in to 'standby mode' when the attached computer/device is powered off.

With my router, Dell PC, and Sony PS3 this works fine.

But with our old Sony Vaio Desktop PCV-RX2D, it seems that there is something coming down the ethernet cable even when the machine is off ... unless you switch it off at the mains! This stops the adapter from going into standby mode.

It's definitely to do with the PC and/or ethernet card ... I've swapped the powerline adapter over with another one and got the same behaviour.

It's not a major problem to have that PC turned off at the mains as we don't use it all that often. But I'm curious why there'd be any kind of signal coming out of the network card when it's shut down!

Any ideas?

 

[GrahamC230K]

Might be worth seeing if disabling wake on lan cures it, assuming you don't use it.

 

[BTB 500]

Might be worth seeing if disabling wake on lan cures it, assuming you don't use it.

I don't, will give it a try - thanks.

Is that: device manager, network adapter properties, advanced, wake up capabilities (XP)?

 

[BTB 500]

Can't see anything obvious on the network adapter properties.

'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' is selected.
'Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby' is not selected.

Something weird about the card maybe, says it's a 'Realtek RTL 8139 Family Fast Ethernet NIC'.

 

[jpskiller]

the option is sometimes in the bios to turn wake on Lan off

 

[BTB 500]

OK if it's not anything easily tweakable I won't bother. It's no biggie turning it off at the mains. Thanks for the assistance!

 

[HughJarse]

As above, its in the BIOS, switch off wake on LAN.

 

[BTB 500]

Erm ... how do I do that?

 

[Shude]

Erm ... how do I do that?

When you turn the laptop on you will probably see a brief message that tells you which button to press in order to enter the BIOS.

Once you're in there just find the Advanced Power Management section and it'll likely be tucked in there somewhere.

With WOL turned on your laptop will be consuming a tiny amount of power all the time while checking for network activity every few seconds, if it detects the "magic" packet it'll turn on. There is probably no chance you could generate the WOL packet at home anyway unless you have the correct equipment so it's best turned off really.