[Desmodog]

Tonight I tried to play MP for the first time and had no luck. There were four other players, and all of them could see the hosted game but not me. I showed no sessions seen in the lobby when I tried to connect to a specifc IP.

Facts -

I have NO router.
Windows XP firewall is OFF.
I could ping his IP fine.
Im not going through a proxy.
When I hosted a game no one could see it either.
I can play other games online (BF1942/Vietnam) with no problem.

What the hell?

And I can't find any source for tech support in the manual. Who do we contact?

TLAM Strike over on the BF board suggested it might be a DirectX/Direct Play issue and advised I come here.

Soo.........here I am. Now what?

I can find no tech support contact info in the manuals.

[Thomasew]

Hi


Certainly sounds like it could be a DirectPlay issue. I have the exact same problem on my normal boot drive.

DirectPlay was working, .. but, somewhere along the line ... it got screwed up. I'm pretty sure it was one or the other driver that caused the problem.

Tried re-installing DirectX 9, ... but, that really doesn't work too well, ... unless you can completely un-install it first.

Fortunately, .. I can boot off my other Windows XP boot drive, ... which is a clean install. DirectPlay works fine from this Boot.

... as does MP in Dangerous Waters. My DW install is common to both XP Boots, ... so, it uses the exact same DW ini files etc.

What you can do, to verify that it is a DirectPlay issue, ... is to get someone to do a DirectPlay Test Session with you, .. which can be done by running DXDiag, ... and selecting the Network Tab.

Try running as Host (create test session) ... and as Client (join test session). If it fails to successfully complete the tests, ... then you have your answer, ... but, not the solution.

As for a solution, ... try re-installing DirectX 9, ... if it will re-install (mine didn't nor won't). If possible, ... re-install Windows XP. (try repair install).

If on the other hand DirectPlay works ok (as per the tests), ... then you may be looking at a problem with your ISP, ... or perhaps Dangerous Waters cannot properly identify your Network Adapter.

Do you have more than 1 Network Card in your Machine? If so, .. try disabling the one not used for DW, .. BEFORE you start DW.

In the DW folder, ... there is a file called ... Adapters.txt ... open it, and verify that the right Network Adapter has been identified, ... and has the correct IP.

For example ... mine reads:-

This file contains all adapters found on this system:
Gigabit Connection - IPv4 - xx.xx.xxx.x (x= hiding my IP .. )


If you have 2 NICs, ... as I said, .. disable the one not used for DW, ... or make sure that it is the FIRST NIC mentioned in the Adapters.txt file.


Ok, .. hopefully you have enough to look at.

Please let us know how you get on ...


Cheers
Tom

[laglos]

Tom's post above should be put somewhere permanent like the tips and troubleshooting section. I'd move the bit about the 2 nics to the top, though, since if someone has two nics, that's more likely to be the problem.

[Desmodog]

There's only one NIC on the machine.

I tried hosting a game to see if it picked the right adapter and IP address. It did. For the hell of it I set the .ini file to select the one I want too.

So now I guess I need someone to help test this dxdiag garbage. If someone who is familiar with this could ICQ me at

265-084-878

sometime today that would be great.

[Kankkis]

I can test but i have MSN Messenger only, find kankkis@postikaista.net and then we test.

-Kankkis-

[Desmodog]

It appears the problem is fixed. I'm currently connected with 2 others.

I'll post more later.

[mikeymike2121]

first i would like to thank you for giving all that advice as to how to repair the MP problem.

However, i have followed all of it and still have a problem, i ran dxdiag and tried to create a session but it comes back saying there was an error while creating session. iam not sure if this is the error you were talking about but i think it probably is.

Also when iam in dxdiag it says directplay8 instead of 9 and i was wondering how to change it to use the correct version.

And just to be through i went into the adapters.txt file and it said
This file contains all adapters found on this system:
Local Area Connection - IPv4 - XXXXXXXXXXX

now i dont know much about this but i dont think it should be saying that iam using a LAN connection when iam not networked or anything and trying to connect to someone elses IP.

Any help would be really appreciated. I really wanna get online and get my destroyed by all the players that are 10 times better then me.

[Looney11]

Post you DXdiag results here, that'll give us a bigger picture.

Do you run a software firewal (norton, zonelabs, win XP)l? How do you connect to the internet?

[Desmodog]

mikeymike, when you "View All Connections" what connections are listed?

Also, how do you connect to the internet? Via a router? Or do you open a connection each time you start the machine?

[mikeymike2121]

Well i have Mcfee Firewall but i always completely exit that before i play including a ctrl alt shut down of everythin mcfee.
(maybe thats not enough, i dont know)
Iam using win xp but not there firewall and have cable internet.

When i try to do a test on DX it has 3 options
Directplay8 Modem Service Provider
Directplay8 Serial Service Provider
Directplay8 TCP/IP Service Provider
Now i use the TCP/IP one cause thats the only one i get to use when i actually try to play DW. But iam not sure if thats the way it should be.

The dx error says DirectPlay test results: Failure at step 9 (Creating Session): HRESULT = 0x80158185 (error code)
and thats wheni try to create a session.

View All connections? are you talking bout when iam in DW? In the lobby there r never any games, and i cant create one either. It stops responding and i have to restart.

[mikeymike2121]

i really need help guys. ive tried uninstalling and reinstalling both directx and DW and still no luck.

i always get DirectPlay8 and now i only get TCP/IP instead of the all 3, i dont know if this is a good thing or not.

I hope someone can tell me how to get it to start using DirectPlay9 instead of 8, and doing a reinstall of windows is way to drastic to do like Thomasew suggested.

[Ramius]

Seems like the error code you gave indicates that Port 6073 (used by DirectPlay) is already in use, so that will be why the game or a test session will not work.

As for DirectPlay 8, thats the latest version.

You could always try a re-install of DirectX 9 to see if that helps.
Heres a link to the DirectX 9.0c Redistributable for Software Developers - Multilingual version - 33.4 Meg

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/1/e/81ed90eb-dd87-4a23-aedc-298a9603b4e4/directx_9c_redist.exe

[mikeymike2121]

[Schirmer]

I have the same problems with no sessions seen in the lobby. And it seems noone can join my game via lobby or ip. Same thing the other way around.
I reinstalled DirectX 9.0c no luck there. The DirectPlay Test Session worked fine though.
No firewall running. I do though have a router but there is no firewall on it. (As far as i know :hmm: )

I have 2 on-board Network adapters 100mb & 1000mb
Screenshot of my adapters:


I can only disable the 1394 without my Inet shutting down, made no difference in the lobby if I disable 1394.

I have no problems playing other online games :hmm:

My Adapters.txt reads:

This file contains all adapters found on this system:
LAN-connection 2 - IPv4 - xx.xxx.xxx.xx (My Inet ip)
LAN-connection - IPv4 - xxx.xxx.x.xxx (LAN ip)

Some results from DXdiag:

[mikeymike2121]

Well i finally fixed my problem, i decided i would try to reformat both to try to get this to work and just because i needed to do it.

Now it all works fine and am able to join and host games online.