stu, no you dont as the nic can be down and it will still reply

the IP address is bound to a seperate VIRTUAL adapter and the routing table binds all 127.x subnets via this adapter. the nic can be completely ducked (or missing) and you'll still get a rping response.

it would tell you if the TCPIP stack is missing tho, but ive never seen that happen since the days well before windows 3.1!