Possible to wake a computer on the network to use a shared printer?

Hello there.

I currently have a printer connected to a computer in my room (Canon Pixma iP4300 [USB]). I also have a computer in the office which is connected to the network via a wireless extender. I am a little short of space in my room and am looking at which peripherals I can move away without too much hassle - the printer is one such thing which has a relatively large footprint and would ideally be located in the office.

I am fairly confident that with a little research I could set up the printer to be shared from the office PC (Vista Home Premium x32) to other computers on the network, which would be a more suitable location for it.

However, one thing that occurs to me is that it would require the office PC to be on in order for other machines to print. Currently the office PC is set to go to sleep after a period of inactivity [20~30 minutes]. My question is, would it be possible for other computers on the network to wake this machine in order to use the printer connected to it?

I hope this makes sense but if you need me to clarify my explanation just let me know.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

Wake on LAN

I would enable the 'Wake on LAN' feature in the BIOS settings on the computer. So, when it receives network traffic, the BIOS will auto wake the computer up.

hi pjhutch, this weekend I had some free time so I disconnected my printer and moved it downstairs and installed it to the office computer. I enabled printer sharing on the new host computer and then attempted a print test over the network which was succesful.


However, as mentioned in my original post, the issue would be printing when the office computer has gone to sleep. I checked the BIOS looking for the 'Wake on LAN' feature you mentioned and came across a feature called 'Remote Wake-up' which I presumed to be an alternative wording for the feature you described and proceeded to set it to "ON". After this setting I waited for the computer to fall asleep and then tried to look for the machine/printer in the network viewer, hoping that would spark it to wake up. Unfortantely no such luck.


I did a search and came across mention that there was an additional setting required for the network device in order for this feature to work. So I went to Device Manager>Network Adapters>Intel Pro Network Adapter>Properties>Power Management and found that the setting I was to select was already ticked 'allow device to wake computer'. In addition another subsetting 'only allow magic packet to wake the computer' is also ticked, though I am not sure what this means.


At the moment I am a little bit stuck as I am not exactly sure the process by which I trigger the office computer to wake in order to use the printer. As such any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Any ideas how I can wake the office computer to use the shared printer? Do I need to use a certain program or some kind of command? Any help would be greatly appreciated