Access EFI in XP?

[phaeton]

This is my first post on ANY forum and I should be considered an adventurous amateur, NOT an IT professional.

I want to use WOL to bring my 17" iMac Intel out of hibernation when running XP Pro. I have checked the appropriate box in the NIC properties tab (System - Device Manager- Properties) without success.

My PC's all require changing a BIOS setting to achieve this. I understand the iMac uses something called EFI in place of a BIOS.

My question is: Is there a way to access the EFI on an iMac to enable WAKE ON LAN in XP?

Thanks!

[chrisp]

Accessing EFI from within Windows XP is practically impossible because the operating system's cooperation is required for that.

However, I believe that this is not actually required to enable Wake-on-LAN. Since that feature is controlled by the networking interface and the firmware, it could be sufficient to enable it from Mac OS X. Check the "Options" tab in the "Energy Saver" preference pane. There should be a checkbox labeled "Wake for Ethernet network administrator access" (or similar), which enables Wake-on-LAN.

I'm at work right now, so I can't check any of this. I'll try to make some tests tonight and post the results.

[phaeton]

Chrisp,thanks for your reply. I've tried this to no avail. It looks like such settings in the Mac OS don't have the same result in XP.

For instance, if I check the 'automatically restart after power failure' in Mac OS it works for Mac but not for XP. (this would be even better than WOL if I could get it to work)

From reading this forum it sounds as if EFI is considered to be vastly superior to a BIOS but at least you can change settings in a BIOS. I must be missing something.

[chrisp]

Okay, I did some quick tests of my own. My conclusion is both simple and unfortunate: Macs (both PowerPC and Intel) only support Wake-on-LAN in the Sleep state, not in the Shut Down state. Within this restriction, behaviour is consistent between Mac OS X and Windows XP. I was able to bring my 17" iMac out of XP's "Stand-By" mode with a WOL packet.

In your original post you talked about Hibernate mode ("Safe Sleep" in Apple terms). Since that's basically the same as Shut Down, but with the RAM contents saved on hard disk, I'm afraid that it simply won't work.

I believe the BIOS setting on the PCs controls whether the network interface is powered by the standby line from the power supply or not. This is required for WOL to work when the computer is off / hibernating. I'm not aware of such a setting for the Intel Macs, not even in Mac OS X.