LAN Gaming Issues

Ive been having plenty of problems getting my computers to LAN together
properly to play LAN games.

I have 2 XP computers and 2 Vista laptops. I am reasonably experienced with
networking and have setup the IP addresses, etc myself. The computers are in
the same IP range, they are 'pingable' and can share internet access- A modem
is attached to an XP computer which allows shared internet with the others.
Computers are connected with a switch.

However, I have problems playing LAN games between the computers. The XP
computers connect immediately to each other, however the Vista ones are
giving me big problems. I have allowed access for the exe files and necessary
ports through Vista's windows firewall.

For Civlization IV I can only connect the games using hamachi - Any computer
can host and I can play. Or if just the laptops- a wireless connection works.
A normal LAN connection does not work!

Mechwarriors 4 will only connect if a particular XP computer hosts (the one
with the modem). If any of the others host- they can see each other, but
cannot connect.

Rise of Nations- All computers can see games created by the other computers
but the vista computers cannot connect and if Vista hosts- its visible but no
one can connect. Only 2 player available (I really want atleast 3 player for
this game!! ANY SUGGESTIONS?)

However, Warcraft III works fine!

Does anyone have a solution that would allow me to just play the games
normally??


Thanks in advance

I don't have any problem using lan with vista to windows xp. I think you
need to change the network name to all the same I think its called
workgroup. I used the help file in vista to get it up and running

I have tried that (Forgot to mention it)
All computers are set to MSHOME

Thanks for the input.

Anyone else have any suggestions???

workgroup is irrelevant. i have found that civ 4 can be inconsistent,
possibly because i'm not the sole maintainer of all systems involved.
on my network, we have 3 vista machines and everything else is linux or
windows, the only times that we have problems with getting any games to
work (warcraft 3, titan quest, civ 4, fear, and others) are when there
is a dhcp or dns conflict. if you're only using one router, you should
have no problem.

historically, the biggest lan problems i've had were related to a
couple of worms in xp that made a computer invisible or unable to see
others on the network. it may be time to seek out a few free virus
scanners for testing.

ultimately, i think your biggest problem could be that you have people
who are not savvy that are installing things without considering
possible repercussions (just like xp) and ruining the functionality. my
general recommendation for people like this (usually, college kids with
a pc that their parents provided) is to reformat and set them up with an
administrator and a limited account with the permissions they need to do
things.


--
acfreema
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

I don't have any problems at all, I run titan quest, cod, Coduo, cod2,
wolfenstien, Rome total war, age of empires 3. We play a lot of lan games as
I have 4 pcs linked up. Have you got 2 ip numbers the same without realizing
it. Its easy done.
the ip numbers I use are 192.168.0.1 - 4 which are all fixed, with subnet
mask 255.255.255.0.

I've found that various computers can have problems connecting to each
other if you have a mix of pc's using simple file sharing and standard
networking. Switch them all to standard if they aren't already.