I utilize both the debian and xp. Each time a device is unpingable (i.e firewall or shutdown) XP's ping will demonstrate request timed out however debian's ping is not going to, It simply stops and don't work.
Thus I won't be able to receive information such as in debian. Any sort of alternative?
Unpingable XP with an error message
This is a feature which the Debian doesn't have because it’s a Linux bases system and XP is a window. I am sorry that you might be able to find an alternative to that. The developers of debian must have written some kind of code to atleast display a message if the device is unpingable. Still try the following things
Use the mii-tool. There might be a possibility that the server you are using has 4NIC system in which 2 are for the cluster. There might be a possibility that you predicted incorrectly that which ones were you using.
You then maybe able to reverse back the cables in order to see if the ping issue is gone or not.