diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 2a7c05fb63f..c040bfd0b02 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -349,6 +349,9 @@ Bug Fixes
 
 39. SOLR-1094: Incorrect value of correctlySpelled attribute in some cases (David Smiley, mark Miller via shalin)
 
+40. SOLR-965: Better error message when <pingQuery> is not configured.
+    (Mark Miller via hossman)
+
 Other Changes
 ----------------------
  1. Upgraded to Lucene 2.4.0 (yonik)
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrConfig.java b/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrConfig.java
index 7000a9dfcf4..c4996c90ea2 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrConfig.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrConfig.java
@@ -27,6 +27,9 @@ import org.apache.solr.search.FastLRUCache;
 import org.apache.solr.update.SolrIndexConfig;
 import org.apache.lucene.search.BooleanQuery;
 
+import org.slf4j.Logger;
+import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
+
 import org.w3c.dom.Node;
 import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
 
@@ -48,6 +51,8 @@ import java.io.InputStream;
  */
 public class SolrConfig extends Config {
 
+  public static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SolrConfig.class);
+  
   public static final String DEFAULT_CONF_FILE = "solrconfig.xml";
 
   /**
@@ -202,7 +207,6 @@ public class SolrConfig extends Config {
   private final NamedList pingQueryParams;
 
   static private NamedList readPingQueryParams(SolrConfig config) {  
-    // TODO: check for nested tags and parse as a named list instead
     String urlSnippet = config.get("admin/pingQuery", "").trim();
     
     StringTokenizer qtokens = new StringTokenizer(urlSnippet,"&");
@@ -213,6 +217,10 @@ public class SolrConfig extends Config {
       String[] split = tok.split("=", 2);
       params.add(split[0], split[1]);
     }
+    if (0 < params.size()) {
+      log.warn("The <pingQuery> syntax is deprecated, " +
+               "please use PingRequestHandler instead");
+    }
     return params;
   }
   
@@ -224,6 +232,11 @@ public class SolrConfig extends Config {
    */
   @Deprecated
   public SolrQueryRequest getPingQueryRequest(SolrCore core) {
+    if(pingQueryParams.size() == 0) {
+      throw new IllegalStateException
+        ("<pingQuery> not configured (consider registering " +
+         "PingRequestHandler with the name '/admin/ping' instead)");
+    }
     return new LocalSolrQueryRequest(core, pingQueryParams);
   }
 
diff --git a/src/webapp/web/admin/ping.jsp b/src/webapp/web/admin/ping.jsp
index 000aa6c5e9f..3c3ddcbb868 100644
--- a/src/webapp/web/admin/ping.jsp
+++ b/src/webapp/web/admin/ping.jsp
@@ -37,25 +37,13 @@
     if (resp.getException() == null) {
 // No need for explicit status in the body, when the standard HTTP
 // response codes already transmit success/failure message
-//      out.println("<status>200</status>");
+      out.println("<status>200</status>");
     }
     else if (resp.getException() != null) {
-// No need for explicit status in the body, when the standard HTTP
-// response codes already transmit success/failure message
-//      out.println("<status>500</status>");
-      out.println("<error>");
-      XML.escapeCharData(SolrException.toStr(resp.getException()), out);
-      out.println("</error>");
-      response.sendError(500);
+     throw resp.getException();
     }
   } catch (Throwable t) {
-// No need for explicit status in the body, when the standard HTTP
-// response codes already transmit success/failure message
-//      out.println("<status>500</status>");
-      out.println("<error>");
-      XML.escapeCharData(SolrException.toStr(t), out);
-      out.println("</error>");
-      response.sendError(500);
+     throw t;
   } finally {
       req.close();
   }