In general, MultiPing 2.00.1, PingPlotter Standard 3.20p and PingPlotter Pro 3.20p all work well under Vista, but there are some caveats and limitations. This article will cover these.

UDP and/or TCP packets on PingPlotter Standard and PingPlotter Pro

The default ICMP packets work great with Vista, but if you're using one of the more advanced packet types, you might have some problems. Vista has replaced the protocol stack and this causes some problems with PingPlotter (MultiPing has only ICMP packets and is not affected by this). This also applies to the seldom-used ICMP Raw Sockets type.

Vista now filters some of the ICMP packets coming back (primarily, the ICMP TTL Expired packets). This means that if you're using the UDP packet type, under Vista you won't see any intermediate hops - only the final destination. There is no known workaround for this right now, although we will update this when we find one.

TCP packets require the WinPCap library (version 4.0 or higher is recommended), and to interface with WinPCap on Vista, the current versions of PingPlotter must be running as Adminstrator. If you right-click on the PingPlotter icon and launch with the "Run as Administrator" option, then TCP packets should work fine. Once you've done this once, then the WinPCap driver will be running and future launches of PingPlotter can be done as a normal user (until you reboot). Launching without administrative rights (the first time after a reboot) will cause an error to appear above the graph: "pcap_open: PacketGetAdapterNames: The data area passed to a system call is too small." - this error is misleading, it's really an access rights error.

If you often find yourself using the TCP packet type, you can automatically start the WinPCap driver at boot so you don't have to run PingPlotter as an administrator. To see information on how to do this, visit the WinPCap faq and look at question 18.

Running as a service with PingPlotter Pro

PingPlotter Pro uses the Interactive Service capabilities of Windows, which has significantly changed (and mostly disabled) in Windows Vista. This means that you will no longer be able to see PingPlotter Pro when you install it as a service under Vista.

The workaround for this problem isn't perfect, by quite a stretch, but it does still allow you to work with PingPlotter Pro as a service.

All services under Vista the interact with the desktop now run under what is called "Session 0" (you can Google for Vista Session 0 for more details on this). So when PingPlotter Pro starts, the user interface is visible on Session 0 only, and not in the tray on your main desktop.

Vista has some capabilities to help with services that weren't built to work with Vista. There is a utility that is installed by default with Vista that looks for any dialogs popping up in session 0 and lets you switch to session 0 to see those dialogs. This gives you access to the PingPlotter Pro user interface. The challenge with this is that PingPlotter doesn't normally have any dialogs - it's normally minimized to the tray.

To solve this, we have created a small script that interacts with PingPlotter Pro when running as a service and causes it to show itself, which causes the Vista service helper to pop up a dialog asking if you want to see it. This is a very simple script which basically just hides, then shows PingPlotter Pro.

Download this script here:
http://www.pingplotter.com/downloads/showPingPlotter.zip
Unzip it and launch the only file inside. You may need to run this file twice after you first reboot, but then you'll get a dialog on the task bar which asks if you want to see PingPlotter Pro. Use that option and you'll be able to use PingPlotter Pro with pretty much everything working (except the caveats above).

DEP Protection with 64-bit Windows Vista (MultiPing and PingPlotter pre-3.20 only)

By default, the 64-bit versions of Windows Vista enable DEP protection on all running software. This causes a problem with MultiPing and all versions of PingPlotter before 3.20 (3.20 fixes this problem). The 32-bit versions of Vista enable a different level of DEP protection which does not cause these problems.

You'll know this is a problem if you try and launch PingPlotter or MultiPing and the application never launches, instead getting a "(the application) has stopped working" dialog.

To fix this, you'll need to disable DEP protection on the PingPlotter or MultiPing executable. Follow these steps:

• Open the Windows Control Panel
• Select "System and Maintenance", then "System".
• On the left side, there are a list of tasks, select "Advanced system settings".
• In the resultant dialog (you'll probably have a security warning here), click on "Settings" button in the Performance section.
• On the "Data Execution Protection" tab, your computer has "Turn on DEP for all programs except ones I list". You can either:
1. Switch that setting to " ... essential programs and services ... ". This has the advantage of fixing problems you may be having with some other applications.
2. Or you can add PingPlotter.exe or MultiPing to the exclusion list (browse to the directory where you installed, then select the executable).
• Close the dialog, then launch PingPlotter or MultiPing.

Other Notes

The 3.20 release of PingPlotter Standard and Pro (released November 16th, 2007) have had significant testing under Vista, and even have some specific Vista code to take advantage of new Vista-only features. Using these applications under Vista should be a great experience for you.