Take the 2-minute tour ×

I'm trying to detect network issue on a share drive that I do not have control over. If it were a PC on the network I would ping it, what can I do to check the status of a network share. I am working off of a Windows 7 PC. Is there a ping or traceroute type mechanism for network shares?

share|improve this question
what do you mean by 'check the status' of a share? If you want to see if it's up just go to start and enter \\servername\share to browse to it. If you want to monitor it, there are tools to monitor SMB shares. I use IPMonitor. –  Paul Ackerman Dec 5 '11 at 20:34
add comment

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You can use net view to enumerate through available shares on a server.

E.G. new view \\servername

However, I'm not really sure what you're trying to achieve...

share|improve this answer
I've pinged machines on our network and have a few time outs. I'd like to see if there are any time outs on the share. –  Michael Shnitzer Dec 5 '11 at 20:39
I'm not sure what you mean. A network share is dependant on connectivity to a specific host (with the exception of DFS). So if you lose connectivity with a host, you will lose connectivity to the share by default. –  Mark Henderson Dec 5 '11 at 20:41
@MichaelShnitzer I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what ping (ICMP echo) does. Not getting a response from a ping doesn't mean that something is broken. It just means that device doesn't respond to a ping. You can use any number of ways to see if a share is up, but if you don't have access to the server, there's no way to know if something is wrong or if you just don't have access any more. –  MDMarra Dec 5 '11 at 20:48
add comment

A "share" is hosted on some piece of hardware - whether that be a NAS or a server or whatever.

So if you normally access the share with \\SHARE\folder then just type ping SHARE and you're able to ping it. It's the same principle as pinging another workstation.

Now if you're saying "hey, I can get to \\SHARE but accessing \\SHARE\folder\file keeps timing out, that is more likely an issue with the folder, the file, or possibly the application you're using to try to access said file.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


