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LAN Games - Vista & XP?

J

jenkins

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 7, 2004
Messages
340
Ok. It's 2AM and I'm out of ideas, and running out of steam, so forgive me if i seem incoherent, or miss some crucial piece of info.

I've got two computers in my house. Computer A is Vista 64 Ultimate (sp1, rc1), EVGA 680i dual gigabit. Computer B is XP Pro Sp2, intel d965wh single gigabit.

For the past few days, i have been struggling to get the two computers to talk to each other. initially, I could not ping either computer - i set them to the same workgroup and helped this issue. Assigning each computer a static ip, xxx.xxx.xxx.11 & xxx.xxx.xxx.12 respectively, fixed this issue entirely. I also removed the DHCP function of my router (greyfox 8 port) on the LAN side of things.

So now that the computers were talking, I tried to play a LAN game between the two. (The main game in question is starfleet command, but this issue exists with mechwarrior 4, and splinter cell chaos theory as well, ie every game I have tried.) If computer A (vista) hosted, computer B could not see it. If computer B hosted, the vista machine could see, but timed out everytime it tried to connect. I disabled both firewalls, and reset computer B's Network card and it allowed the two computers to connect and play. The Vista machine could still not host, but I didn't worry about it. I closed out the game, tried some of the others, they all worked.

Now, today is a different story. Cut both systems on to play a quick game, and 7 hours later I'm posting here. computer B, can ping vista, but vista cannot ping xp. After trying several things, I threw up my hands in frustration and downloaded SP1 for vista. It did not help this issue, but it did speed up general connectivity. I removed and reinstalled the Network Driver on computer B, xp, and reset the workgroup. I can now ping both ways, and share files and folders. However, If i host a game with computer A, vista, xp can still not see it. Furthermore, Vista can see but not connect to any xp games.

I am at my wits end.

Both systems have the latest drivers
I have reset the firewalls on both systems
both have a static ip
i can ping
i can access files
as far as i know, permissions are wide open
I downloaded LLDP (To show the network map, but this doesn't seem to work)
route print shows everything normal on both systems, on computer a, it shows 1 persistent route which is my gateway.


If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my dissertation.

Jenkins
 
Oh, i forgot to mention. I got the game to work once today. It was after some monkeying with the firewalls, i didn't really change anything, just cut them on, and then cut them off. we got into the game, then the game was showing some errors so we closed it and went back in, and it refused to connect. after that, i tried netsh firewall reset. No dice.

Thanks.
 
I got one game to work again today. It seems like there is almost something clamping down as soon as i get one succesful game. Either a firewall, or something of that nature. Perhaps this is more a question for the software section.

Both computers are using AVG 7.5 Free Edition, and both are using the built in windows firewall. That's it.

I'm posting this in the software forum as well. If this is illegal, please move one or the other.

Thanks.

p.s. ($10 to whoever fixes this.)
 
try disabling the windows firewall to see if that is the source of the problem. What router or switch are you using?
 
My bet would also be Windows Firewall if the Router firewall is disabled. Is it a wireless router? You mentioned that you have the dhcp function turned off right? It almost sounds as if you have a limited dhcp scope and another device is trying to grab one of the IP's that is being used and kicking off the other machines. Just a thought though.
 
Windows firewalls have been disabled.

Naw, its just a wired 8 port. I borrowed a "coupler?" from a friend. I'm going to use it to bypass my router entirely and essentially make the computers connect via a big ass crossover cable.

Hope this works.

How do i check on the dhcp scope? Originally I set the scope of the router to xxx.xxx.xxx.2-10, and then set the other ips at 11-12. I have since completely disabled DHCP on the router.

Thanks.
 
If you have completely killed DHCP on the router, It won't matter unless you have another device trying to jump on your network using a static IP you have used for the other devices. If it's not a wireless router though, I'm sure you are aware of what's plugged into it. My thoughts were if it's a wireless router, a neighbor may be piggy-backing your connection and inadvertantly kicking you off when he jumps on.
 
Vista and XP don't seem to get along for me either. I have a friend who has a hard time sharing files between her XP and Vista HDs... for some reason XP doesn't want Vista to see it :p. I had the XP machine able to transfer files to the Vista one but no dice anymore.

*shrug* dunno if its an OS problem or what, but its stupid they can't get along well. I remember having this problem when XP first game out at LANs trying to get 98 to play nicely with it :eek:
 
Ok - I bypassed the router. Still cant play games, still could share files. The systems did something interesting though.

The Vista machine could no longer see the xp machine, but the xp machine suddenly started seeing the vista machine in the game browser ????

Again, thanks for all the input and help guys. Even if you dont nail it, you are making me think. And damnit, at this point its the computer or me, either i'm fixing it, or i'm shooting it.

Thanks.
 
when you start up the game server it may take a long time for vista to see it, have you tried to manually connect from each machine, if the game has that option try that out with the ip adress of the server.

i was having extreme trouble getting shares to work on my vista machine and then i realized vista would be able to connect to shares or whatever on another networked PC after several minutes it would just start working after you shared the folder or started the PC.
 
Hmm, interesting. So it essentially has to warm up? Before when it connected with no issues, it jumped in almost right away. But I can't remember if i transferred a file prior to that or not. I'll have to fuss with that tomorrow.

I've tried the direct IP approach, but that didn't work either. Good thought though.
 
didn't read everything...

start>run>ipconfig /flushdns

then try reading my post below...

also try changing the workgroup to the same group/name like mshome or workgroup or pooper
 
I had a similar issue with some XP machines (although I could never get them to see each other). One night I woke up at 3am with the answer, MTU. The MTU settings were slightly different, when I changed both back to the default everything worked perfect.

This may not fix yours, but food for thought.
 
Not to seem ignorant, but what is MTU?

Flush DNS didn't seem to work. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I had another "breakthrough." I can now get Splinter Cell Chaos Theory to work. It seems to have been working since I got the two computers to ping each other.

The old starfleet games had an option for IPX. I'm using TCP/IP of course, but I wonder if it used some sort of emulation to run IPX through TCP? I don't know, I'm a networking noob, but maybe something is filtering out IPX. I know that XP does not have installed natively, and I'm not sure vista has an option to install it. Does this make any sense, or am I crazy?

Thanks.
 
jenkins said:
Not to seem ignorant, but what is MTU?

Flush DNS didn't seem to work. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I had another "breakthrough." I can now get Splinter Cell Chaos Theory to work. It seems to have been working since I got the two computers to ping each other.

The old starfleet games had an option for IPX. I'm using TCP/IP of course, but I wonder if it used some sort of emulation to run IPX through TCP? I don't know, I'm a networking noob, but maybe something is filtering out IPX. I know that XP does not have installed natively, and I'm not sure vista has an option to install it. Does this make any sense, or am I crazy?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

hmm, what if you were to run the game in windows xp compatibility mode in vista? not sure if that would change anything but maybe
 
Here is how I would approach this situation.

Disable the firewall service on both machines. Turning off the firewall doesn't always work.

Start > Run > services.msc

Windows XP
Disable "Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)"

Vista
Disable "Windows Firewall"

What you want to do is stop the services on both machines and set the startup to "Disabled"
Verify you can ping to and from both machines using hostname and IP. Once it passes the "Ping Test" try to LAN it up.

Another suggestion: Run both of the machines in Safe Mode with Networking and see if you can LAN it up then. That will help you gauge what sort of issue it is.
 
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