Fast way to determine if a network computer is up? [VC++6]

[Shaitan00]

I run an application (consider it like a server) which (every 23minutes) needs to determine which computers are running and which have been powered off (over the internal network), to be reliable the server itself will query those machines to determine their status before proceeding to critical tasks.

 

Problem is, seeing as this is done repetively (every 23minutes or less) and causes a delay to user when in progress (can't proceed until group of stations is defined) I need something that is:

a) reliable

b) fast

 

I used to check the REMOTE REGISTRY (using Windows REG api stuff) but aside from this being a horrible way it is also prone to errors (which I recently discovered) that are related to registry connection and not to the status of the station.

 

I've tried using standard UNC \\MachineName\\ to try and access it but this takes a long time to timeout (image if I have 100 stations to query every 23mins) and is not security compliant. Also tried using MailSlot messages but these don't seem to fail even when the computer is down (oddly enough...).

 

Are there any other options out there? Some form of PING once maybe? Something that can be handled with C++6 and that can return a TRUE/FALSE (or whatnot) I can use to base myself on "system is up or down" and continue from there?

 

There has to be a more reliable way to handle this... Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Much appreciated,

[PlausiblyDamp]

http://www.naughter.com/ping.html might be worth a look - is just a ping implementation in C++