Q: How can I easily wake up a remote machine?

A: Would you like to be able to wake up a remote machine by only having to remember its name, rather than its MAC address?

In a previous FAQ, I had a Windows PowerShell script that sent the magic packet needed to wake up a machine over the network (see my FAQ "How can I easily send a magic packet...?" here at Windows IT PRO).

However, it required you to enter the MAC address of the machine.

The script below grabs a data file called wakeup.dat (update to where you have the dat file), and reads in name and MAC address pairs in the format below:

savdalscs01|00:1B:21:BD:E2:DBsavdalscs02|00:1F:D0:81:36:77savdalbfs01|00:15:17:C4:E1:05

Save the script below as wakeup.ps1:

#param ([String]$HostName = $(throw 'No host passed, please pass hostname'))   #either formatif ($args.Length -ne 1){    throw "No host passed, please pass host parameter"}$HostName = $args[0].ToUpper()$FoundMatch = $FALSE$data = Get-Content "d:projectspowershellwakeup.dat"# write-host $data.count total lines read from fileforeach ($line in $data){    $linesplit = $line.split("|")    if ($linesplit.Length -ne 2)    {     throw 'Each line should have | format, e.g. host|00:23:23:00:23:23'    }    if ($HostName.CompareTo($linesplit[0].ToUpper()) -eq 0) #if they are equal    {        $FoundMatch = $TRUE        $MACStr = $linesplit[1]        $MACAddr = $MACStr.split(':') | %{ [byte]('0x' + $_)}        $MACAddrParts = $MACStr.split(':')         if ($MACAddrParts.Length -ne 6)        {         throw 'MAC address must be format xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx'        }        $UDPclient = new-Object System.Net.Sockets.UdpClient        $UDPclient.Connect(([System.Net.IPAddress]::Broadcast),4000)        $packet = [byte[]](,0xFF * 6)        $packet += $MACAddr * 16        [void] $UDPclient.Send($packet, $packet.Length)        write "Wake-On-Lan magic packet sent to $MACStr, length $($packet.Length)"    }}if ($FoundMatch -eq $FALSE){    write-host "Never found match for " $HostName}

You can then run it as follows:

PS D:projectsPowerShell> .wakeup.ps1 savdalscs02Wake-On-Lan magic packet sent to 00:1F:D0:81:36:77, length 102

To see more FAQs, please go to John Savill's FAQs page on Windows IT Pro.