What is the "amd64_microsoft-windows-ping-utilities" folder in WinSxS for?

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What is the "amd64_microsoft-windows-ping-utilities" folder in WinSxS for?

Found something really peculiar in my process list. It shows "PING.EXE". Using "dir PING.EXE /s" in the root folder of my hard drive, I located numerous "PING.EXE". Most of them do what I expect: a command-line utility that lets you ping network hosts. But one of them acts quite strange. And that's the "PING.EXE" that resides in "C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft-windows-ping-utilities_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.16299.15_none_cc1dd0fa00ff3b7f" directory. There are actually three executables in this directory:

09/29/2017  05:41 AM            19,456 PATHPING.EXE
09/29/2017  05:41 AM            21,504 PING.EXE
09/29/2017  05:41 AM            17,920 TRACERT.EXE

Executing these executables on the command-line does nothing. It doesn't provide the standard "usage" help screen. And adding a host as argument also produces no results. they simply run and then return with no visible output.

I'm starting to wonder if they are some kind of virus or malware, etc. And I'm not sure why "amd64" is on my system when it has an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU.

Anyone came across these file and can shed some clues to what they are?

Mitch
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 22:39:54 -0800

Also just found similar executable in "C:\Windows\WinSxS\wow64_microsoft-windows-ping-utilities_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.16299.15_none_d6727b4c355ffd7a":

09/29/2017  05:42 AM            16,896 PATHPING.EXE
09/29/2017  05:42 AM            18,944 PING.EXE
09/29/2017  05:42 AM            15,360 TRACERT.EXE

Mitch
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 22:45:19 -0800

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