Troubleshooting IP Configuration

If you have trouble installing Microsoft TCP/IP on your computer, follow the suggestions in the error messages. You can also use the ping utility to isolate network hardware problems and incompatible configurations, allowing you to verify a physical connection to a remote computer.

Use the ping utility to test both the host name and the IP address of the host. For the syntax and description of the ping command, see Appendix A, "TCP/IP Utilities Reference."

To test TCP/IP using the ping utility

  1. If the computer was configured using DHCP, use ipconfig to learn the IP address.
  2. Use ping to check the loopback address by typing ping 127.0.0.1 and pressing ENTER at the command prompt. The computer should respond immediately.

    If ping is not found or the command fails, check the event log with Event Viewer and look for problems reported by Setup or the TCP/IP service.

  3. To determine whether you configured IP properly, use ping with the IP address of your computer, your default gateway, and a remote host.

If you cannot use ping successfully at any point, check the following:

If you can use ping to connect to other Windows NT computers on a different subnet but cannot connect through File Manager or with net use \\server\share, check the following: