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I'd like to be able to test if a remote Windows machine is asleep or not. Whether this is suspend or hibernate doesn't matter. I was originally trying to do this with a ping, but I would think that obviously doesn't work since -> WOL.

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Not my area of expertise, but I don't think this is possible without some out of band management (ESPECIALLY for hibernation since the system should actually be completely off) – Shinrai Jul 27 '12 at 18:01
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If Ping is not blocked what is the problem with it? Standard Ping won't wake a computer up if it is hibernating. – sgmoore Jul 27 '12 at 18:17
My understanding is that because ping isn't blocked when a computer is in hibernation I would not be able to test what state is in based on if ping is blocked or not. – Negative Jul 27 '12 at 18:32
Replying to pings is a function of the operating system, so if the computer is sleeping you will not get a reply. Conversely if you get a reply then the computer is awake. But if you don't get a reply then it could be that the computer is sleeping but it could also be because the computer is configured never to reply to pings. – sgmoore Jul 27 '12 at 18:44
Okay, I'm off to do more testing for now then. Thank you, I'll be back. – Negative Jul 27 '12 at 18:47

1 Answer

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If ping is not working, there are several other command line utilities that can help you test connection to a machine. If you are sure that the machine is connected to your network, then a fail command could only mean that the machine went into hibernation (or it got disconnected from the network). Here are some such utilities:

[1] tracert - The trace route command calculates the number of hops to a destination. You can use it in a similar manner to a ping.

[2] nbtstat - This is a powerful utility in Windows that help you resolve dns names. Typing "nbtstat -a" will list all computers on your network and you can check whether your particular PC is on the list or not.

[3] telnet - If you know that your PC is listening on a particular port (such as 80 for HTTP ,21 for FTP or 20 for SMTP), you can test it with telnet.

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