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I know this sounds like a bit of a silly question in some ways but humour me :P

Basically I want to make it virtually impossible for a computer to start up without having a LAN cable plugged in. I don't want to re-image the computer or boot using the LAN, I just want it to send a signal down the LAN cable which will allow the computer to boot. Without that signal being sent the computer cannot boot.

Is this possible to do? If not are there some alternatives that could be suggested?

Thanks in advance! Niels

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  • Well, you can't do this without hardware editing, since it's not a feature that any BIOS has, but you could set it to boot on LAN and unplug the power button, which would require opening the computer to fix. May 7, 2015 at 23:43
  • Would you be okay with disconnecting/removing/breaking the PC's power button and thus ONLY being able to trigger a boot or shut down over the network? How much are you willing to spend? Are you hoping to modify existing PCs you already own to do this, or are you okay if only new custom-built systems do it? What exactly do you mean by not wanting to re-image the computer (would you be open to a one-time repartitioning of the hard drive to add a new pre-boot partition)?
    – Spiff
    May 7, 2015 at 23:44
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    Define " boot", "start up", and "a signal down the LAN cable". A bootloader such as U-Boot could probably stall a PC from booting into Linux.
    – sawdust
    May 8, 2015 at 0:17
  • To clarify, you do NOT want to boot from the LAN, you want to boot normally (local drive), but prevent that from happening without some form of LAN handshaking to verify the presence of that LAN connection? This would be like a security feature to prevent the computer from being used at an external location?
    – fixer1234
    May 9, 2015 at 4:12
  • to respond in clarification to fixer1234 yes I want to do exactly what you have said. A LAN handshake is a perfect way of describing it! May 9, 2015 at 13:08

1 Answer 1

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I am not sure what objectives you are trying to achieve here.

All PCs come with a pre-built power button, you can remove this from your PC to deter from physically turning on. And then, enable wake on LAN feature in your BIOS, some do not have the network feature but recent PCs should have.

You can of course turn off the PC in Windows without touching anything on your PC, and turn on your computer from another PC using wake-on-lan function. But you need another PC and two PCs must be all connected via a switch, in other word, they should be in the same LAN.

Have a look at this article on how to enable wake-on-lan http://www.howtogeek.com/70374/how-to-geek-explains-what-is-wake-on-lan-and-how-do-i-enable-it/

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