A final post to this thread from me.

The code suggested by dee-u and further commented upon by dilettante was :

Shell "command.com /c ping -n 2 " & strComputerName & " > log.txt", vbHide

This worked fine for me under Win98SE, but not under later OS.

We had to change it to :

Shell "cmd.exe /c ping -n 2 " & strComputerName & " > log.txt", vbHide for Win2000 and XP

I have tested this OK with Win2000 and WinXP. My colleague has reported that it also works fine with Vista. As yet not tested with Win7.

In case anyone else finds this thread via the search routine, as did I, I hope that this OS version information may prove of assistance.

camoore

Wales, UK