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I have Windows Machine, and its firewall rejects ICMP pings, so just testing the machine using ping IP doesn't work even when the machine is up and running.

How can I find out if Windows machine is running without ping?

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What do you typically use to access this machine? Remote Desktop? Or some other screen viewer? Maybe you could use that to verify that if it is online or not. –  paradd0x Apr 1 '12 at 13:25
Does the ping packets get rejected or do they time out, check via nmap. –  HackToHell Apr 1 '12 at 13:56
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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

If the machine firewall is rejecting ICMP, it is probably also rejecting all other forms of not already authorized access so if opening the firewall to accept ICMP is not an option, you may try the alternative ways below:

  • If you have access to the router, you can check if the machine is in the connected devices.
  • If the machine is sharing "Public Documents" you can check if they are available in the network.
  • If the machine is sharing a printer, you can check the print queue.

Another way but I'm not sure if it will work from a windows machine but issuing the ping on a Linux machine, if the remote windows machine is not connected (offline), the ping command returns "host unreachable" and if it is on and not answering to ping, there is no response.

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I will use host unreachable vs no response (nice trick!). –  bakytn Apr 1 '12 at 14:27
That's what I use too... but I wasn't sure it worked with ping command issued on windows too. –  laurent Apr 1 '12 at 14:35
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Is the machine you are talking about is in your own network, or in a network u can reach, then you can try capturing the packets in the network, and from MAC address or from IP address you can know whether the machine is alive or not. Try WIRESHARK for packet capturing keeping your network card in promiscuous mode.

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