Can't Host Multiplayer Games

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.

Yeah, as Kryo said a lot of people get that message even when they can host. Don't know whats up with that, but it sure is annoying.

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.

According to the_Monks guide, if you have UPnP enabled, and your ports forwarded, your nullifying both of them and in effect causing nothing to change. All I had to do was forward ports 6000-6112 and it worked after that, took less than 4 minutes. I don't even know what UPnP is ...

This guide seems to answer a lot of questions though, go through it. There are also a lot of stickies, there was something about reseting TCP/IP and Winsock or something, I don't have the link for that though. You say you went through all the guides though, so of course you've already read this, and just missed the part about not using UPnP.

http://www.kiclan.com/Monk/Networking_and_SINS_by_the_Monk.pdf

...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.

Like I said, I don't even know what UPnP is, but it says not to use it. I don't use it, and I can host. I saw that ports 6000 and 6112 needed to be forwarded, I already had 6112 forwarded for battle.net, but still couldn't host. So I made a seprate entry for Sins that forwarded 6000-6112 and it started working.

Maybe try this:

http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2007/03/troubleshooting-how-to-reset-internet.html

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.

Yes, I am sure that my modem is just a modem. My previous modem was was DSL modem/router combo (2wire 2701) but I recently switched from DSL to cable. The cable modem is only a modem (Motorola SB5120) and not a modem/router combo, so I had to buy a seperate router (linksys WRT54G).

Also, I have forwarded tcp 6000-6112, there is still no change. I disabled UPnP on the router itself, and deactived anything pertaining to the router firewall. I still can't host. I have even tried bypassing the router completely and hooking directly into the cable modem, and still nothing. I am out of ideas.

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 ?

Yes, its a static local IP and it is configured correctly. Port forwarding aside though, why would it not even work when I bypass the router altogether? Doesn't that denote that there is something on my computer blocking my ports?

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.

Try this:

Start>Run type CMD press enter.

Type: ping localhost

That should respond as 127.0.0.1

If not let me know.

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?

Symantec can be a pain to get rid of on a system.

How about a good cleaning? Have you ever run NoSav? I have to use it at the office, since we used to have Symantec Corporate and that product does not uninstall very well.

I'd suggest downloading CCleaner and running a full system scan. Uninstall AVast, install v2.7 of NOD32 (Private me on this one), boot to safe mode and do a full system scan with the modified config.xml that I can send you. Boot back to Normal mode and run XP TCP/IP Repair. Depending on what NOD32 finds, you might need to run a couple of other scanners in safe mode, like Spybot etc.

Unless you got a Rootkit, these normally can be fixed pretty easy. I also have a batch file that closes Services you don't need to free up precious memory.

Could you ping localhost?

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.

@Crash486

Make sure that anything such as "SPI firewall" (bs marketing crap on small soho routers) is DISABLED when playing SINS. The "SPI" built-in on these small consumer-model routers serves little more than "fragmenting" data and that is a big problem especially for p2p-type connections.

Oh, and many soho routers like yours (that don't have seperate NAT-filtering control) tie it in with port-forwarding. Such that for forwarded traffic NAT will be "relaxed" somewhat, to what level will of course differ from brand/model to brand/model.

Look for something called "gaming mode" on your router. Sometimes router manufacturer's hide NAT-relaxing under something called that.



@CSG_Lipfert

Yes I am saying forward:

TCP 6000

TCP 6112

There is no need to forward a "range" of ports for this game. If a person's router doesn't allow single-port forwarding then they should set the range to open TCP 6000-6000, etc.


the Monk

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.