My phone's power button has gone bad. Can I use my computer to send a USB command to start the phone up? I got an old phone: an HTC WildFire S. Everything works fine, except that the power button has gone bad. Can I start the phone from my computer over a USB connection somehow?
Probably not

Many PCs can be woken from sleep mode via a keypress. Some, if configured to allow "wake on LAN", can even be woken via a specially-composed Ethernet packet.

I'm unaware of any way to force an Android device to power on using a special USB command.

What to try


You can try removing and reinstalling the battery.
Or you can try connecting the phone to a charger; there might be a slim chance that this will force it to power on.
If that doesn't work, you can try a Google search for [ how to power up Android phone without power button ]. You'll find lots of results, including an article on the AddictiveTips website and many others. These articles have additional suggestions which I haven't mentioned. Maybe one of the articles has a tip which can help you.


What next

If none of the aforementioned ideas help, you can then either:


Attempt to repair the phone yourself.
Pay a technician to repair it.
Or try to sell it (at a discount) to a local shop, which can then try to fix it.