Ping Plugin does not work properly in Windows 7

[Alex2539]

After a short back and forth between Blade via PM regarding his issues with the Ping Plugin, I believe that the problem is that it is incompatible with Windows 7. I used one of the skins he posted to test this:

Code: Select all

; Based on Simple Ping from flake ( http://customize.org/flake_x )

[Rainmeter]
Author=Analton
Update=1000

[Variables]
fontColor.Text=255, 255, 255, 160
bar.color=255, 255, 255, 50
graph.line1=255, 255, 255, 75
graph.line2=255, 255, 255, 37
FontName=Tahoma
FontHeight=8
AntiAlias=1
; Host!!!
Address=www.google.com
; Label!!!
Label=Time to #Address#: 

[MeasurePing]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\PingPlugin
DestAddress=#Address#
UpdateRate=2

[MeterPing]
Meter=STRING
X=175
Y=10r
MeasureName=MeasurePing
fontSize=#FontHeight#
fontColor=#fontColor.Text#
StringAlign=RIGHT
Text="%1 ms"

[MeterPing.txt]
Meter=STRING
X=3
Y=0r
StringStyle=BOLD
fontSize=#FontHeight#
fontColor=#fontColor.Text#
StringAlign=LEFT
Prefix=#Label#

[MeterPing.graph]
Meter=Line
MeasureName=MeasurePing
X=30
Y=4
H=43
W=180
LineCount=1
LineColor=#graph.line1#
AntiAlias=1
AutoScale=1

On my laptop running Windows XP, the skin works properly. I tested several sites and compared the results to Windows' built-in ping tool; they were pretty close. On Windows 7 however I get a constant value of 0. The only exception is when I ping a local IP, like "192.168.1.1" which is my router, or "192.168.1.101" for my laptop. Both of those seem to work just fine.

In summary, the Ping Plugin does not work with addresses outside of the LAN in Windows 7. I would appreciate it if others could do a quick test with this, or any other Ping skin and confirm my findings. Be sure to try different websites as well as a LAN IP or two if possible.

[wasky1]

this works for me win7 64x & 86x

[MeasurePing]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\PingPlugin
DestAddress=www.yahoo.uk

google does not

[†Blade†]

Hmmm, maybe it's not recognizing the .com at the end so it's not sure what to ping? by any chance did you try www.yahoo.com and not just www.google.com?

[jsmorley]

Don't forget that ping is a service, not a port on a computer. If the service is disabled, and MANY sites do so to reduce DOS attacks and such, you won't get a response from the site.

[JamesAC]

It does seem to be very site specific. bbc.co.uk and yahoo.co.uk worked but google did not. I am using Win7 x64

Don't forget that ping is a service, not a port on a computer. If the service is disabled, and MANY sites do so to reduce DOS attacks and such, you won't get a response from the site.

Would this still be true from cmd?? All the sites I tested returned fine when using the ping command at the command line even if they didnt give a value in rainmeter.

[†Blade†]

Capture3.PNG

If you notice.. when I went to ping http://www.google.com in the cmd it did come back with a response..
BUT it looks as if the cmd changed it to http://www.l.google.com would that be a reason why the plugin isn't working,
cause it isn't effectively changing some sites to how the cmd does it?


EDIT: Ok, nvm about that, I just tried putting www.l.google.com in the ping gadget and still no response.
I did put in bbc.co.uk though, it does take a LOOOONG time to get a response but eventually it says 30,000 ms

[JamesAC]

I think 30,000 is the default timeout, If you get that I think you are not getting any reply.

[jsmorley]

I did some testing this morning, using both IP and DNS addresses, and as far as I can tell the ping plugin is completely dysfunctional in Windows 7. I think I got a response once using my own local IP address, but no address "outside" at all, even google.com (74.125.159.99) works at all. I don't even get the "TimeoutValue" returned, I think it just goes into an endless braindead loop. Pretty much 100% of the time it just stays at "0" even though I have the timeout set to 20 seconds and the timeoutvalue at -1.

[wasky1]

yesterday when i first saw this thread this worked for me

[MeasurePing]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\PingPlugin
DestAddress=www.yahoo.uk
UpdateRate=5

and displayed between 21 and 30 fluctuating.

now it shows 30000 all the time


and now its working again for some reason

[Alex2539]

A ping of 30000 is just means it timed out. That could just as easily be a weird hiccup in your connection or a typo in the URL. What's interesting is the constant 0 ms returned by Google.com. It seems like it's not timing out, but I'm hard pressed to believe that the response is instantaneous.