Firewall causes Ping -a to not report computer name

madman999 · 6th June 2005

Any help would be appreciated.

I have a network of PCs running Windows XP Home and Pro SP2 and having odd problems with pinging machines.

when I enable the MS firewall on some of the machines and try to ping it from another machine, it reports back the IP address as the computer name. When I disable the firewall and ping from another machine, it reports the computer name.

However, on some machines with the firewall enabled, ping it from another machines gives me the name back correctly. It doesn;t seem to matter if it is an XP home machine or Pro or even SP level. I checked to make sure that the firewall settings were identical.

can anyone tell me if there is any other place to look? What I want to have happen is to be able to ping the machines and have the name reported back with the firewall enabled. Incidently, on an affected machine, it works correctly if I ping locally, just not remotely.

Thanks in advance.

**PeteC** · 6th June 2005

madman999 - Welcome to the Board

I think your question will get a better response in the Networking forum - I have moved it there.

madman999 · 8th June 2005

update to my issue.

it seems like all the machines in this group do not report the name back when the firewall is turned on and I try to Ping -a it from another machine. oddly enough, doing it locally produces the correct results though.

anyone else have an issue like this?

thanks in advance