A. The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes in Windows XP and later provide a Win32_PingStatus object that you can use to ping a machine. The following script, which you can download at http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/download/vbpinging.zip uses this object to ping a passed hostname or IP address. Because of space constraints, some lines wrap to two lines.

Option Explicit

Dim strHost

' Check that all arguments required have been passed.
If Wscript.Arguments.Count < 1 Then
    Wscript.Echo "Arguments <Host> required. For example:" & vbCrLf _
    & "cscript vbping.vbs savdaldc01"
    Wscript.Quit(0)
End If

strHost = Wscript.Arguments(0)

if Ping(strHost) = True then
    Wscript.Echo "Host " & strHost & " contacted"
Else
    Wscript.Echo "Host " & strHost & " could not be contacted"
end if

Function Ping(strHost)

    dim objPing, objRetStatus

    set objPing = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}").ExecQuery _
      ("select * from Win32_PingStatus where address = '" & strHost & "'")

    for each objRetStatus in objPing
        if IsNull(objRetStatus.StatusCode) or objRetStatus.StatusCode<>0 then
    Ping = False
            'WScript.Echo "Status code is " & objRetStatus.StatusCode
        else
            Ping = True
            'Wscript.Echo "Bytes = " & vbTab & objRetStatus.BufferSize
            'Wscript.Echo "Time (ms) = " & vbTab & objRetStatus.ResponseTime
            'Wscript.Echo "TTL (s) = " & vbTab & objRetStatus.ResponseTimeToLive
        end if
    next
End Function 

You can modify this script to do whatever you need. Notice that I've commented out some lines (') that give more information about the ping attempt, but you can leave the lines in if the information would be useful to you. Run the script by using the following command:

D:\projects\VBScripts>cscript vbping.vbs savdalex01

Host savdalex01 contacted

You can find more information about Win32_PingStatus at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmi/win32_pingstatus.asp .