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Remote Booting a Windows 98 PC?

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by tomsal

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I posted this in Q&A too, because I really do need a good solution asap on this.

We have an after hours customer service person who is on call during the weekends. She uses gotomypc with her home computer to dial into a Windows 98SE client at work.

She needs access to this 98se client whenever she is on call (each weekend), once in a while gotomypc (or the computer itself) will lock up. In order to fix it you need to physically reboot the machine. Obviously that means someone has to come in to work on the weekend, just to reboot a Win98 client.

I am looking for a solution, be it hardware or software (though I would think a hardware solution is more viable), that would allow me to power off the W98 machine, re-boot it AND log it back into the LAN all via an Internet connection (or direct dial would be fine too).

Any ideas?

This was sprung on me last minute, we are working on a whole complete VPN system but that's still on the drawing board for now.

2 replies

by admin

much better ways to do it, but if you can write a script to get everything on when it boots you can use an x-10 module (they sell them at radio shack under another name if you are in a hurry) to cut power and then restore it via phone dial-up with the matching phone link. I used to work in a frozen food factory, and we successfully used this in some cases. It's a (relatively) quick and cheap way to do this. Remember to turn scandisk off on start-up off.

Also, it goes w\o saying I know, buta 2k or NT (or even XPpro in my experience) box would probably not need this so much.

Here's a link for the phone patch:

http://www.x10.com/automation/x10_tr16a.htm

If you need it in a hurry check Rdio Shack. This item with a remote power module will probably be about $50-60 US and the software is a free download at x-10. There are also kits to set you up.

Another idea I have would be to set up something along with a UPS and it's power management software. If you can shorten the time it runs on a battery to, say 1 Min. it could provide a clean shutdown and restart effectively quite cheaply. There are actually really good interfaces to do this commercially for cold storage plants etc. but they will be more spendy and long term. You could also build an interface yourself- it's not that hard, but for short term I would look into using x-10.

Hope this helps, if not, no worries! :)

by tomsal

thanks!

That's a good idea about radio shack. I appreciate your fast reply, nothing like last minute/this minute requests...on a monday no less...:)

thanks again!

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