VBScript: Output Snippet

This function can be found on Microsoft.com somewhere. I remember once finding some nslookup function where the author wrote the output of nslookup to a file on the hard drive, parsed it then forgot to delete it. I used that script and after a few years, I found that directory full of thousands of text files. Anyway, using StdOut.ReadAll would have been much more efficient. Here's a snippet I've used over and over:

Function PingHost(strComputer) Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set objExec = objShell.Exec("ping -n 2 -w 1000 " & strComputer) strPingResults = LCase(objExec.StdOut.ReadAll) If InStr(strPingResults, "reply from") Then PingHost = True Else PingHost = False End If Set objExec = Nothing Set objShell = Nothing End Function

For the record, a better way to find out if a machine is pingable is by using WMI and the machine's fully qualified domain name (if you use the netbios name, there is a delay if the host doesn't exist..but DNS reports back immediately)

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\.\root\cimv2") strComputer = "myServer.myDomain.net" Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_PingStatus Where Address = '" & strComputer & "'") For Each objItem in colItems If objItem.StatusCode = 0 Then 'The Computer is Pingable msgbox "Woot" End if Next Set objWMIService = Nothing