nWOL Manual



Overview of nWOL

nWOL is a Wake on LAN tool for Windows. Objectives of developing nWOL is to provide simple user interface and fun experience to use wake on lan.

Highlights of the nWOL features are as follows.

• Very simple UI with intuitive operation.
• Super fast Scanning of all online hosts in LAN. MAC addresses, IP addresses, and host names can be automatically discovered in very short time.
• Automatic detection of IP address change in the LAN. With this feature, you do not have to worry about IP address change caused by DHCP anymore, or you do not have to assign fixed IP address to a host.
• Sending magic packet to remote hosts even to outside LAN.
• DNS/Dynamic DNS support.
• Monitoring of the status of remote hosts in real time. Host status can also be shown in task tray. You can use nWOL as a monitoring tool of remote hosts.
• Making sound when a host starts up or shuts down.
• Customization of the main window design.
• Displays the time elapsed since magic packet was sent.
• Multi-language support. (English, Japanese)
• Command line application "nWOLc.exe" which can be used in command prompt or batch files.

 

Download and Installation

• You can download nWOL at nWOL Official Page.
• The installers are provided for both 32bit and 64bit versions. Use the 32bit installer for 32bit Windows and the 64bit installer for 64bit Windows.
• nWOL requires .NET Framework 4.5. If it is not installed in your PC, please install it.
• If you encounter "Windows Protected Your PC" screen, you can continue installation by clicking "More Info" text and then "Run anyway" button. If you can not trust this site, you can download ZIP package and run the nwol.exe without installation.
• For those who can not run installer, ZIP package is also provided. Just uninstall and run nwol.exe.

 

Initial Settings

• When you run nWOL for the first time, you have to register host information in the settings window.
• The easiest way to register hosts is to use "Scan" button. Turn on the power of the host you wish to register, and press the Scan button, then all online hosts in the LAN will appear in the host list of the settings window.
•  If a "Host Information Sharing File" exists, the default host list will be automatically loaded when nWOL is started for the first time.

 

nWOL Main Window

• The status of each hosts are shown in the status display field (ex. "On"(online) / "Off"(offline)). See the table below for the details.
• To start a remote host, click the red power icon. The Magic Packet will be sent out, and the number of seconds elapsed will be displayed in the status display field.
• Click the Settings icon (gear icon) to open nWOL Settings window.
• A blinking lightning bolt icon indicates ping activity.
• The main window can be resized vertically.
• If all hosts are set WOL mode as Disable, the width of the main window will be narrowed accordingly.
• Host names will be displayed in blue, when the host is specified as the Host Group member.

 

Status display field

Meanings of the status display field is as follows.

 

nWOL Settings Window

 

Host Information

Host Name

Any string to identify the host. (Required)

MAC Address

Twelve Hex charactors to specify the MAC address. Delimiters, such as ':' or '-', are not necessary. (Required)

IP Address

IP address or DNS name to obtain the IP address of the host.

There are two modes, "IP Address Mode" and "DNS Mode", to obtain IP address. Depending on what you entered in this field, the mode will be determined. See the table below.

If you leave the IP Address field empty, status(ON/OFF) of the host can not be monitored.

IP address is required, if the host you want to start up by WOL locates outside LAN.

If name resolution fails in DNS mode, the host status cannot be monitored.

For more details on IP address processing mode, DNS, and Dynamic DNS support, please refer to the following article.

Related Article: nWOLのDynamic DNS(DDNS)対応について (Japanese)

 

Netmask

Netmask of the host. This can be omitted,

If you want to boot the PC outside LAN, netmask is required. If you omit, magic packet will be sent directly to the IP address of the host, not to the directed broadcast address calculated from IP address and Netmask of the host.

 

WOL Mode

Determins the behavior of the WOL button on the main window.

UDP Port

Specify the destination UDP port number to which magic packets are sent. nWOL's default UDP port number is 9. To change it, check the checkbox and enter the port number in the entry field.
In the UDP Port field of the Host List view, "-" will be displayed if the default port number is used.

"Get MAC/IP" button

Obtain MAC address and IP address automatically based on the Host Name information. This function is available only when the host is online.

"Get Name/MAC" button

Obtain Host name and MAC address automatically based on the IP address information. This function is available only when the host is online.

"Auto Netmask" button

Obtain Netmask information automatically. This function is available only when the IP address is  an address in the LAN.

 

Host List

Add button

Add new host information to the host list. Host information has to be entered beforehand.

Delete button

Delete selected host.

Overwrite button

When you want to edit any host,

1. Select the host you want to edit
2. Edit any host infomation
3. Press Overwrite button to take effect

Up/Down button

Move selected host up/down.

Scan button

Scan all the online hosts in the LAN. This is the easiest way to register hosts. This process will be done in approx. 10 seconds.

To use Scan function,

1. Turn on the host you want to register in the LAN
2. Press Scan button
3. Then all the online hosts will be added in the host list
4. If necessary, delete the unwanted hosts from the list

Please note that the host outside LAN can not be found by the Scan.

By default, the Scan function (including "IP address/host name auto-correction" function) works only for NWs with 24bit netmask (/24) or smaller networks (ex. /28). If you run Scan on larger network (ex. /20), only the hosts which has a host ID (in the IP address) smaller than 256 will be scaned.

See "Allow to Scan Large NW (over /24)" option in the section below.

 

Related Article: nWOL TIPS: LAN内ホスト検索(Scan)が高速で気持ちいい (Japanese)

 

Sorting host list

By clicking the title area of each column, you can sort the host list. Clicking toggles ascend/descend.

 

Context Menu(right-click) in the host list area

Following items are shown in the menu.

- Unselect All : Make all the host unselected.
- Copy Host Information : Copy host information of the selected host in text format.
- Copy All Host Information : Copy host information of all hosts in text format.

You can export host information to other application.

 

General

Run on Sign in

nWOL will be started automatically when you sign in.

Don't Check for Updates

Do not check for updates when starting nWOL.

Allow to Scan Large NW (over /24)

By default, the Scan function (including "IP address/host name auto-correction" function) works only for NWs with 24 bit netmask(/24) or smaller networks (ex. /28). If you run Scan on larger network (ex. /20), only the hosts which has a host ID (in the IP address) smaller than 256 will be scaned.

By checking(enabling) this option, the Scan function will work also for the LAN larger than /24, and you can scan more than 256 hosts. However, please note that large number of pings will be sent out to all IP addresses of the LAN segment and this may cause heavy traffic.

 

Ping Interval

Sets the interval for sending pings to check the status of the host. The ping sending timing varies from host to host.

Note that pings will be sent at intervals of one second while waiting for the host to boot up after the WOL button is pressed.

 

Task Tray

Stay on Task Tray

The icon will appear in the task tray and will continue to run in the background even if you close the nWOL main window.

 

Display Mode of Task Tray Icon

Select one of the following options to determine what to display by the color of task tray icon.

See the following section for the settings of Host Group.

 

Left-click of Task Tray Icon

Left-click on the task tray icon toggles between showing and hiding the nWOL main window.

Right-click of Task Tray Icon

Right-click on the task tray icon displays the context menu.

• "Show Status of First Host" mode:
  Menu item for starting the first host will appear in the context menu.

•  "Show Status of Host Group" mode:
  Menu item for starting all the hosts in the host group will appear in the context menu.
  In addition, when there is a single host in the host group, menu item for starting the host will also appear in the context menu.

 

Host Group

You can define Host Group with any number of hosts. This group is used by the task tray icon function and the sound function.

By default (i.e., if you leave Group Definition field blank), Host Group will be "all hosts".

Group Definition(RegEx)

Enter a regular expression to select the hosts for Host Group. Hosts whose host names match the regular expression will be selected. Host names in the nWOL main window will be colored in blue.

If this field is blank, all hosts are selected as Host Group and the host names are colored in black in the nWOL main window.

For example, you can simply list the host names as ^(Server|Client|MyPC)$ .

For the specification of regular expressions, see the section "Specification of regular expressions used in nWOL and nWOLc" below.

Ignore Case

Use case-insensitive matching.

 

IP Address/Host Name Auto-Correction

This function automatically checks whether the IP address and host name of the registered host has been changed. Changes are instantly reflected in nWOL configuration. This function enables continuous monitoring of a host even if the IP address is dynamically changed, for example by DHCP.

 

Auto-Correction Mode

Select from "No Auto-Correction", "IP Address Only", "IP Address and Host Name", to determine what information should be corrected.

Run Now

Run auto-correction immediately.

Run on Startup

Run auto-correction when nWOL starts.

Run every N minutes

Run auto-correction every N(1-999) minutes.

 

DNS

DNS Suffix List

When resolving the name of a host, if the name cannot be resolved by the Windows setting, the DNS suffix list set in this field will be used to try to resolve the name. If you want to register multiple suffixes, use ":" as a delimiter.

 

Design

Settings for the nWOL main window design.

Design Size

You can choose the size of the overall design of the nWOL main window, including the size of the WOL button, from Small, Medium, and Large.

Line Spacing

Specify the line spacing in dots.

Horizontal Spacing

Specify the horizontal spacing in dots.

Font

Font for displaying host names.

Vertical Alignment

Vertical offset of the Host Name in dots.

Restore Default

Restore nWOL's default design setting.

 

Sound

Sound Mode

Select one of the followings for sound mode.

・ No Sound
・ Startup by WOL
・ Startup of any host in Group
・ Startup and Shutdown of any host in Group

Startup

Select the sound to be played when the host starts up.

Shutdown

Select the sound to be played when the host shutdown.

 

Host Information Sharing

• The "Host Information Sharing" function is to share host information with other users in a PC.
• Once an administrator saves the host information in the "Host Information Sharing File", other users in the PC can load the host information.
• When each user in the PC runs nWOL for the first time, the contents of the "Host Information Sharing File" will be automatically loaded and the user do not need to register hosts by themselves.
• Only the administrator can create a "Host Information Sharing File" by clicking the "Save" button. All the host information in the host list will be saved in the "Host Information Sharing File". The information will not be added to the existing information, but will be overwritten. Sometimes it takes about 10 seconds to confirm the administrative privileges.
• To confirm what host information is registered in the "Host Information Sharing File", please perform "Load" and see the host list.
•  Each user can load "Host Information Sharing File" and add into the host list, by clicking "Load" button.
• The "Host Information Sharing File" is located at C:\ProgramData\nWOL\HostInfo.

 

Load

Read the host information from the "Host Information Sharing File" and add to the host list.

Save

Save the current host list to the "Host Information Sharing File". Only an administrator can "Save" the file.

 

Language Selection

nWOL supports English and Japanese. Select one of the following options at the language selection menu in the nWOL settings window. Display language will be changed when the nWOL settings window opens next time・ Default :  Use default language of Windows. For other languages than English or Japanese, English will be used.
・ English
・ Japanese

To display the nWOL windows properly in each language mode, following font has to be installed in Windows.

・ English : Segoe UI
・ Japanese : Meiryo UI

 

Help

You can see links to nWOL documents and License terms.

 

nWOLc.exe: Console Command for nWOL

Console command "nWOLc.exe" is included in the nWOL distribution package. Installer puts nWOLc.exe in the same directory as nWOL. This command can be manually executed from command prompt window, and also can be executed from a batch file or task scheduler.

nWOLc.exe provides functions such as:

• Sending magic packet to hosts
• Checking the online/offline status of the host
• Waiting for a host until the host becomes online

 

See the details of nWOLc.exe in the following page.

• nWOLc.exe Manual

 

nWOL's behavior when the IP address is unknown

(*1) Magic packet will be sent directly to the IP address. If you set the "directed broadcast address" for the host directly in the IP address field, the target host will be able to recognize the packet as magic packet. But, otherwise, the target host can not detect the magic packet while it is offline.

(*2) Magic packet will be sent to the broadcast address of the LAN. This means the magic packet does not go outside LAN.

 

Other Details of nWOL Functions

• nWOL supports multiple Network Interface Card (NIC) environment. Magic packet will be sent out from appropriate interface according to the IP address of the host. (If the IP address is unknown, magic packet will be sent out from all the interfaces.)

 

Specification of regular expressions used in nWOL and nWOLc

Please refer to the page below for the specification of the regular expression used in nWOL and nWOLc.

• Regular Expression Language - Quick Reference (Microsoft)

 

nWOL-related files and registry entry

Locations of files and registry entry are as follows.

 

Changelog

• nWOL Versions History (Japanese)

 

License and Disclaimer

• You are allowed to use this version of nWOL (this software) free of charge under the following conditions of use.
• You are not allowed to sell this software or sell this software as part of another product without permission from the author.
• You are not allowed to modify this software without permission from the author.
• You are not allowed to reverse engineering this software.
• Some of the functions of this software are restricted to be executed without a license code. In order to use such functions, you need to purchase a license code corresponding to the usage conditions.
• You are allowed to freely distribute this software, as long as you don't change anything for the distribution package. When you distribute this software on the Internet, you have to clearly display a link to one of the following nWOL official pages.
  - https://n-archives.net/software/nwol (Japanese)
  - https://n-archives.net/en/software/nwol (English)
• This software is licensed "as-is" without any warranty, either expressed or implied.
• The author will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential or indirect damages due to use of this software.
• The terms and conditions of use of this software are subject to change in future versions without prior notice.

 

Feedback

If you have any questions, requests or bug reports, please send your message in this page below.

nWOL official page : https://n-archives.net/en/software/nwol

 

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