There are many times that you are running a remote access script and you dont want to waste trying to connect to a machine that is not reachable.

This function uses wmi to do a ping result so its not via native os PING. That way if this fails then you know that WMI is broken or denied as well which you will need to know.

Get server list

#create a function that accepts the string variable of servername
function Ping-Server {
Param([string]$server)

wmi call for ping

$pingresult = Get-WmiObject win32_pingstatus -f "address='$Server'"

boolean result. this is neat one thats simple. its saying if the status code is 0 then its true and you may continue

otherwise its false and there will be no result to process

if($pingresult.statuscode -eq 0) {$true} else {$false}
} # end of function ping server

this get-content is a quick way to turn the output of get-content into an array. once it sees the % then each item in the array is associated now with $_ as you can see with the line #$servername = $_

Get-Content "c:\scripts\machines.txt" | % {
$servername = $_

now we call the function above with the variable $_.

 $result = Ping-Server $_
 # here is where that boolean comes in handy. If you do a if( ) like below then you are saying. If its true then continue else if false then end
if($result){

your code would then process in here.
}

Here is a full script using it

Get server list

function Ping-Server {
Param([string]$server)
$pingresult = Get-WmiObject win32_pingstatus -f "address='$Server'"
if($pingresult.statuscode -eq 0) {$true} else {$false}
}

Get-Content "c:\scripts\audit\win7machines-appsense.txt" | % {
$servername = $_
$result = Ping-Server $_

if($result){

#find if netenabled

$nic= gwmi win32_networkadapter -filter "netenabled = 'true'" -cn $servername

$nicPower = gwmi MSPower_DeviceWakeEnable -Namespace root\wmi -cn $servername |

where {$_.instancename -match [regex]::escape($nic.PNPDeviceID) }

check to see if machine has enable power to true

if ($nicPower.Enable -eq $true)
{
}
else
{
$servername | out-file -append c:\scripts\wolstatus.txt
$nicPower.Enable | out-file -append c:\scripts\wolstatus.txt

this sets it so nic can power machine

$nicPower.Enable = $true

this applies the enable = true

$nicPower.psbase.Put()

this forces a reboot

#(gwmi win32_operatingsystem -cn $servername ).reboot()
$servername | out-file -append c:\scripts\wolenabled.txt
"enabled wol on machine" | out-file -append c:\scripts\wolenabled.txt