Hi,

        As part of my VB 4 app under win95/NT I need to ping a network
        machine to determine if it is online.  I want to use the
        ping command under dos to do this and have it's output
        redirected to a file from which I can read the results.

        I use the following command:

        retval = Shell("ping www.machine.com > ping.results", 1)

        The problem is that the ping.results file does not get created
        so I can't test the result of this command in my VB app.  It
        does work if I put the ping command in a batch file and execute
        the batch file using the Shell command, however, I would rather
        not do it this way.

        So does anyone know how to make this work or even if there is an
        easier way to ping a machine in VB and obtain the result.  If it
        can't be done without the use of an ocx then are there and
        cheap/freeware ping tools out there?

        Amar K.