Power on laptop with lid closed from shutdown/hibernation

Question

here is my situation: I have an Aspire A315-41 that I use with an external monitor and an external wired keyboard. The laptop is closed and positioned below the monitor stand. I want to specify that I googled for 2-3 days before posting this question, but I didn't find any possible solution.

So basically what I'd want to do is to power on the pc from a state that can be the standard shutdown or an hibernation (NOT sleep nor hybrid sleep), without pulling out the laptop, opening it and press the power button. I tried every possible configuration to wake the system pressing a key with the external keyboard (which would have been the best solution), but none worked: the usb ports are powered off, so hitting any key does nothing. I think I'll have to stand to the idea that this is just not possible.

Do you guys have any ideas on how to achieve this?

P.S. I'd want to avoid to sleep the system because I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that keeping the RAM used for all the time and never completely shutdown the laptop isn't too good...

Solution

You may do that from your network and using another device, which may be another computer or even your phone. This is called wake-on-lan.

For the prerequisites and required setup, see this answer.

For phone applications, a quick search found one app for Android and one for the iPhone.

Comments

[UrbiJr]

yeah I already knew about that, but isn't it only for waking the system from sleeping? I don't think it works if the laptop is hibernate/powered off.

[harrymc]

It is also applicable to powered-down state if you network adapter is capable of "listening" to incoming packets in low-power mode.

[UrbiJr]

I don't think so, anyways it's not a possible solution since I'd have to connect the laptop via an ethernet cable to the router, which is not possible in my case unfortunately

[harrymc]

All the phone needs is to be on the network, meaning be connected to your router, which is probably the case.

[UrbiJr]

I didn't mention the phone. WOL requires that the laptop is connected via cable to the Ethernet port: currently I'm using the wireless adapter, since the router is too far (no, I can't change its position).

[harrymc]

Not a lost cause. See your WiFi adapter in the device manager - if the "Allow this device to wake up the computer" is not greyed out it might work. The wireless adapter needs to be integrated onto the motherboard and ensure you have the latest driver. Sometimes it might also require the computer to have a static IP.

[UrbiJr]

just to tell you that I realized WOL is the only possible solution for cases like mine... so in short words I'm going to connect the laptop to an ethernet bridge (which will be connected to the router). If that'll work, your answer will be marked as the solution :-) btw yeah I already tried to enable that option for the wireless adapter, but it's greyed out, no chance to enable it.

[UrbiJr]

WOL worked, also if I shutdown the system, and that's what I needed.