Enable PING in Windows 10

How To: Enable PING in Windows 10

Follow these steps to allow a PC to reply-back to a Ping request.

By default, Windows 10 machines will not reply to a PING request in a Domain or Public Network.  The PING will report "request timed out" -- even though you know the machine is active on the network. 

Windows firewall blocks these requests to protect the workstation from probing and certain denial-of-service attacks.  With this said, it is handy to be able to ping a workstation and you may want this feature enabled.

The restriction is controlled by the Windows Firewall which has three different profiles (or types) of rules:

* Private (the local network or workgroup) - Ping enabled by default; see below
* Domain (typically in a corporate AD environment) - Ping disabled
* Public (the "Internet" - the wide-world) - Ping disabled, not recommended to enable

I recommend enabling PING on Private and Domain networks, but not on Public Networks (where you are probably NAT'ed anyway).


Steps:

1.  Confirm the network-connection type is "Private"
     In Control-Panel, "Network and Sharing Center"
     Note if your network is "Private"

* If not Private, I do not recommend continuing with this article.   Often/sometimes a laptop's wireless connection was built as "Public" - and PING (will not and should not) work on this type of network.

If your home or office network was configured as "Public" or "Guest", it was likely configured wrong when first built. 

To fix: 
a) Open Windows "Settings" - the gear icon (oddly, "Settings" cannot be found in the Control-Panel)
b) Choose "WiFi,"
c)  then "Manage known networks". 
d) Other-mouse-click your network name, and "Forget". 
e) Rebuild/re-connect to the network, selecting "Private".


2. In Windows Control-Panel, "Windows Firewall", click "Advanced Settings"

Click for a larger view

3.  In Advanced Settings, on left-nav, click "Inbound Rules"

4.  Scroll to "File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-IN)"

Note: Three (v4-In) - one for each profile.   "Private" should already be enabled


5.  Locate "File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In -Domain)
     "Other-mouse-click" and choose "Enable Rule"

Click for larger view

6.  Confirm the "Private" version is enabled (green-check-mark).  Then, consider enabling the same two rules for ICMPv6 - Private and Domain, although this is less-than important.

In each Rule's "Advanced Settings", you can chose a checkbox for
[X] Domain,
[X] Private, or
[X] Public. 

Although you can click multiple boxes in the rule, it will conflict with the other two similarly-named rules.  Only work with the [X] Domain (or [X] Private rule, as named.

Close the Firewall control-panel.
From any other machine in the network, PING the computer's name or IP address.  To find the computer's name, see File Explorer (My Computer), Properties.

You are done.


If the PING is still failing, ping the machine's IP Address.  Locate the address with these steps:

a)  From the machine you are trying to ping, open a DOS prompt.
b)  Type this command, no quotes:  "ipconfig"
c)  Note the IPV4 address

d)  Then, from a remote machine on the same network, type this DOS command:

     PING 192.168.200.124     (example IP Address, yours will be different)

If the PING is still failing, and especially-if the target machine is a wireless, could it be connected to a different wireless network?  For example, your DSL or Cable modem may have a wireless antenna, and that antenna may be on the "other side" of your internal home network.  Older Qwest/ATT DSL Modems were configured in this fashion.  Diagnosing this is beyond the scope of this article.


Comments welcome.