Tip: Know the Network Troubleshooting Tools in Windows Vista

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Tip: Know the Network Troubleshooting Tools in Windows Vista

Windows Vista contains an assortment of utilities you can use to diagnose, monitor, and repair network connections. Here’s an overview of the key tools you’ll find in Windows Vista and what they’re used for.


Get MAC Address (Getmac.exe)
Discovers the Media Access Control (MAC) address, and lists associated network protocols for all network cards in a computer, either locally or across a network.


Hostname (Hostname.exe)
Displays the host name of the current computer.


IP Configuration Utility (Ipconfig.exe)
Displays all current TCP/IP network configuration values, and refreshes DHCP and DNS settings.


Name Server Lookup (Nslookup.exe)
Displays information about Domain Name System records for specific IP addresses and/or host names so that you can troubleshoot DNS problems.


Net services commands (Net.exe)
Performs a broad range of network tasks; type net with no parameters to see a full list of available command-line options.


Netstat (Netstat.exe)
Displays active TCP connections, ports on which the computer is listening, Ethernet statistics, the IP routing table, and IPv4/IPv6 statistics.


Network Command Shell (Netsh.exe)
Displays or modifies the network configuration of a local or remote computer that is currently running; this command-line scripting utility has a huge number of options, which are fully detailed in Help.


PathPing (Pathping.exe)
Combines functions of Traceroute and Ping to identify problems at a router or network link.


TCP/IP NetBIOS Information (Nbtstat.exe)
Displays statistics for NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) protocol, NetBIOS name tables for both the local computer and remote computers, and the NetBIOS name cache.


TCP/IP Ping (Ping.exe)
Verifies IP-level connectivity to another internet address by sending ICMP packets and measuring response time in milliseconds.


TCP/IP Route (Route.exe)
Displays and modifies entries in the local IP routing table.


TCP/IP Traceroute (Tracert.exe)
Determines the path to an internet address and lists the time required to reach each hop; useful for troubleshooting connectivity problems on specific network segments.