Pinging Windows pc from Debian

Hi All....I'm very fresh in this whole open source thing....I hope u all won't get mad on the question I wanna ask...well yesterday I manage to install Debian woody on my pc,which I intend to use it as a server in home network.Hopefully It can serve my 3 windows based pc....But the problem or confusion which confront is do I need to install samba before I can start pinging my windows based pc....

No, you do not need Samba or any other package for ping.

If you cannot ping your Windows computer then the problem is most likely a firewall on the Windows PC.