If you were to log in, you'd be able to get more information on your fellow community member.
For NT4 with IIS4, ICMP ping is not enough to determine if the web server is running, neither is querying the service running state. If you are hosting multiple virtual servers on the same machine it is possible for IIS to stop responding on any address that you are using independently of the others. You should always test the HTTP connection, not just the machine networking.