First guess would be that your PATH environment variable is screwed up. If you go to Start, right click Computer, select properties, hit the Advanced System Settings link, and then hit the Environment Variables button, you should be able to find the Path. Make sure it's not empty.
Infarction
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vista requires an additional installation of all the standard tools. the usual add-remove windows components have all those disabled in the default installation, as well as the telnet and tftp client
DimaYasny
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I'm again suspicious of your PATH. Here's mine:
%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Intel\Wireless\Bin\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Imaging\;C:\PROGRA~1\CA\SHARED~1\SCANEN~1;C:\Program Files\CA\eTrust Antivirus;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\
Notice the system directories at the beginning. These should be first, as they should be the first place the system looks for executables. Since they didn't show up in yours, I'm almost curious if something wiped your PATH out. You can try putting those back in (just edit the value from that dialog) and see if that fixes it. ping, for example, is in the %systemroot%\system32 directory.
Infarction
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