Have you had someone try to join your games despite the "Other players may not be able to join" message? That notice is quite conservative, so generally if you've got everything set up right, people probably can join just fine despite it.

That's a negative, no one can join my games. When i bypass my router, it won't even let me host, it will just time out and disconnect when i attempt to host a game.

...2 of the guides say TO use UPnP. In fact... it says it in the multiplayer checklist, to use both UPnP and forward port 6112.

Monk's guide says to disable it on the router. It doesn't say anything about not running it on your hosting computer.

Crash,

did you read the part in my guide about finding out whether or not your cable/dsl modem is also doing NAT (ie. working like a router).

Several of the people I've helped here since lauch day had that problem. They were in a double-NAT situation. In such a situation it doesn't matter that you've setup the port-forwarding correctly on your router, as there's nothing to forward yet. In a double-NAT scenario you have to port-forward from your cable/dsl modem, to your router, and then from your router to your PC.


As my guide explains, to find out if your cable/dsl modem is ALSO a router, check the status page of your router and verify that it is in fact getting an INTERNET IP (NOT something like 192.168.xxx.xxx).


the Monk


EDIT:
Of course, like Norrec pointed out, my guide also says to forward TCP port 6000 make sure you've forwarded all TCP traffic for both ports.

Crash,

Your forwarding 6000 to 6112 on your game PC IP correct? Are you using Static IP Addresses or DHCP ?

Confirm your game PC IP address ("ipconfig /all" from the command prompt, I always use Static IPs myself. I can email you screens of my config if you'd like.

Monk, are you saying forward 6112 to 6112 and 6000 to 6000 or the range from 6000 to 6112 ?

That does sound rather odd, possilby a LSP?


Layered Service Providers (LSP) are small pieces of software that can be added or inserted into the Windows TCP/IP handler by other software. Data outward bound from your computer to a legitimate destination on the Internet can be intercepted by an LSP and sent somewhere other than where you intend it to go.

Perhaps try XP TCP/IP Repair, but only do that as a last resort.

Well last night, my friend came over with his laptop, and with the router properly configured, he was able to host a game via my network. So it has been confirmed that the problem has to lie with my computer. Its a pretty old computer, and its been heavily used in its lifetime. It's had multiple different anti-virus protection programs, including both mcafee and norton. Both of those are removed as of now and I am currently running Avast. It's had multiple different anti spyware programs including counterspy, adaware (still running), and spybot.

Is there any chance that there could be a residual firewall leftover by any past antivirus/spyware software I used to have on the computer? Is there anyway to check for firewall programs other than searching through processes? The computer has an embarrassing number of processes running, alot of them look redundant. I think honestly the computer needs to be reformatted, but I would really like to try to get it to work without having to do so.

Also, I was able to find that my router (WRT54G) is running a NAT type 3. I can't find anywhere within the router interface to switch it to type 2. Is there any firmware upgrade for the WRT54G that will allow me to change the NAT settings?

I didn't get a chance to try yet, I didn't see the post until this morning at work. It will be another, 9 hours before I get a chance to get home and actually start fiddling with it.

success!

I loaded on CCleaner and found some old Symantec network drivers still installed from when I used to have norton a few years back. I uninstalled them and it started working. Thanks for the suggestion Lipfert.