Windows XP Hacks

Troubleshooting Network Connections with ping, tracert, and pathping

When you need help tracking down network connection problems, the command line is the place to go.

If you’re having problems with your network and network connections and you need troubleshooting help, forget XP’s GUI; it doesn’t offer you enough help. To get to the root of the problems, you’re going to have to get down and dirty with command-line tools. ping and tracert are familiar tools that you might have used on occasion, but you might not know the depth of their power or the switches available to use with them. And you probably haven’t heard of pathping, a kind of combination of the two commands.

Troubleshoot TCP/IP Problems with ping

The quickest, most commonly used, and, frequently most helpful TCP/IP troubleshooting tool is the command-line tool ping. Use ping to find out whether the resource or server you’re trying to connect to on your network or the Internet is active, and to see if there are any problems with the hops along the way to that resource or server. ping sends Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Request messages to the destination you’re checking on, receives responses in return, and reports to you information about the connection path between you and the destination and how quickly the packets made their trip. For example, if you are having trouble getting email from a server, your first step in troubleshooting should be to ping the server to see whether the server is live, ...