• Enable Ping Windows Server 2012 R2 Server
• Dism Repair Server 2012 R2
• Enable Ping Windows Server 2012 R2 Firewall

If you can't ping your brand new Windows Server 2012 R2 Core machine from another machine... Don't panic!

Original product version: Windows Server 2012 R2 Original KB number: 2722035. You try to turn on Network Discovery on a computer that's running Windows Server 2012. To do it, you change the Advanced sharing settings in Network and Sharing Center. However, the changes aren't saved. So you can't turn on Network Discovery. By default Windows 2008 does not respond to pings. To enable: Administrative Tools. Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-IN) Enable Rule. You should now be able to ping your server from the LAN. I have four Windows Server 2012 servers hosted on ESXi 5.5. The first one is the firewall box with two network adapters. One with an external connection to the internet, that is shares its connection with the second internal network adapter with no external connection. The installation of the AD DS role also adds the File Server role, and File Server role enables its Windows Firewall rules to allow ping. This is illustrated below. Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controller. Windows 2012 R2 Member Server. Note that the File Server role is not installed. Enabling IMCP v4 Using PowerShell. To enable the File and Printer. Disabling/enabling ping response in Windows Server 2012 and 2016 Firewall settings. The easiest way to block or enable ping is to use 'Windows Firewall with Advanced Security '. To start it, press Win+R and enter the command wf.msc. Go to the section of incoming rules ('Rules for inbound connections ').

Ping reply is disabled by default. You just need a few easy step to enable it:

4 Steps total

Step 1: Open cmd

Enable Ping Windows Server 2012 R2 Server

Step 2: Run the following command

netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8

Step 3: Ping it!

Now your machine should respond to pings - If it doesn't you have to dig deeper to solve your problem.

Step 4: Deactivate ping reply if neccesary

To disable ping replies again just issue the following command:

Dism Repair Server 2012 R2

netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8 disable

Enable Ping Windows Server 2012 R2 Firewall

5 Comments

• Pimiento
  andrewcupper Sep 22, 2014 at 08:42am

  Windows says:
  IMPORTANT: Command executed successfully.
  However, 'netsh firewall' is deprecated;
  use 'netsh advfirewall firewall' instead.
  For more information on using 'netsh advfirewall firewall' commands
  instead of 'netsh firewall', see KB article 947709
  at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=121488 .

  The new command is:
  netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”Allow Ping” protocol=icmpv4 dir=in action=allow

• Pimiento
  craig bartley Jun 5, 2015 at 02:25am

  Thanks for your clarification, Andrew. your correction was helpful information for me. I was following my way through the help prompts and had many other parameters, but it's nice to know it can be as simple as what you've posted. Here is the command that I was using:

  netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name='allow ping' dir=in action=allow enable=yes profile=any protocol=icmpv4 interfacetype=any

  Still seemed to accomplish the goal, and I guess it's good that I've learned a bit more about the granularity of this command structure!

• Sonora
  configt Sep 16, 2016 at 07:50pm

  My thanks to both of you for sharing. It's Friday and I guess I need to reboot my brain.

  Happy Weekend!

  John

• Cayenne
  AndreaD Sep 20, 2016 at 06:16pm

  Thank you for helping me fix this when my boss couldn't :)

• Poblano
  roywelch Mar 27, 2017 at 01:10pm

  This enables PING on all network connections. Is there a way to enable PING on only one connection. The server in question is a VPN server and I need to be able to ping the server from inside our network, but I do not want it to reply to Ping request from the outside world.

  Does anyone know how to setup the firewall filter for just one of the connections?