Windows XP Hacks

Troubleshooting Network Connections with netsh, netstat, and ipconfig

More command-line tools for tracking down problems with your network connection.

In addition to well-known command-line network utilities such as ping, tracert, and pathping, there are several other all-purpose utilities that can help you troubleshoot network connections: netsh, netstat, and ipconfig.

Use netsh to Troubleshoot Network and Internet Connections

netsh is a wide-ranging command-line diagnostic tool that has an exceedingly large number of commands available. (For a complete list of available commands, use Windows XP Help and Support and search for netsh.) Here you’ll learn the most interesting.

Perhaps the most useful of the netsh commands are the netsh diag commands. Use them to find out information about your PC’s network setup, such as finding the IP address of its mail server, newsgroup server, DNS server, and similar resources.

There are two ways to use netsh : directly from the command line with all its switches, or first getting to the netsh console by typing netsh at the command line and then typing the command from the netsh> prompt that appears. For example, you could type netsh diag show adapter at the command line, which lists every network adapter on your PC, or you could get to the netsh> prompt and type diag show adapter.

Use the netsh command to connect to the resources and then get information about them. For example, to find out the IP address of your DNS servers, type netsh diag ...