Is LAN gaming even possible in vista??

Ive got a slight problem. Me and the missus like to play co-op RPGs, problem is since upgrading 2 vista on my machine (against my will i might add) she cannot connect at all to any simple LAN game i create. I have tried everything logical i can think of to get this to work.

I have even gone so far as to dissable both wireless cards and simply use a crossover cable so theres absolutely no confusion, with a simple static IP/mask configuration, turned off the firewall, uac, defender, turned on 'network discovery'(whatever that is) and.... (drumroll)... IT STILL WONT WORK!
Even though i can see all the network shares etc. so the connection is definitely working and i can ping both ways.

Her PC config is exactly the same as before, XP with configured AVG firewall so i know its not hers, although i have tried disabling this too.

Has anyone else experieced these problems with local network gaming on vista? If it worked for you, what setting did you use?

The problem you may be having sounds like it could just be your network work group name; XP defaults to MSHOME, Vista is WORKGROUP. Perhaps you should run the network setup wizard and make sure you both have the same workgroup name, otherwise I don't think you can connect to each other -- as a test, try copying a file back and forth between each other.

Vista is a joke, for pretty much everything. Upgrade back to Windows XP, give your system resources and hardware a treat.

Or, go the whole hog and upgrade to Linux....

Is LAN gaming even possible in Linux?
(With reference mainly to lack of games to choose from)

Have you try messing with the IPv6/IPv4 (IPv6 is enabled by default) and did you look in to Link-Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) for XP?

My impression as well at the moment. But like it or not we're going to have to upgrade at some point. Certainly to try our software on it for compatibility testing.

Yes it is, very reliably and yes there are (inc. a few windows ones, but unfortunately not this one) Anyway, this 2 windows PCs 1-XP 1-vista, nothing to do with linux.

I was looking at that but its fairly new stuff to me, i didnt know wether removing it would cause (other) probs :?

Also, my workgroup is same on all my machines so no problem there. I would go back 2 XP if i still had my damn disk, although steve had a good point above.

do you happen to know if the game you playing writes it infomation to Documents and Settings?

This folder does exist in vista but is hidden and the file permissions are set to deny Everyone group read access?

You can disable IPv6 and enable IPv4 (it shouldn't cause problems unless they have increased the number of IP addresses.

I doubt it, it saves games and charactrers in its program folder dir.

Ill try ditching V6 then see what happens :)
I was thinking IPX may work but i notice its gone in vista.

I would like to point out if its "Program Files" (or any restricted system folder) then data is redirected to Users\your-name\AppDat\Local

hmm, thx for the tip.

Ive got the game working now (i think :/), i still have to use the crossover but have dissabled ipv6 and those 2 other new things on the lan port.

My wireless networking in vista is a joke though, it keeps loosing it whenever i try to do things like ping etc, only correctable by a restart. It only seems stable when im browsing the net / smb stuff.
I know its not the card as Ubuntu (ironically) never has any problems at all with it and worked OOTB, so it must be a vista/driver issue.

Ah now if you had said that you where connecting to a Linux computer then the IPv6 would have been the fisrt port of call (Linux for the first time is behind on the netwoking tech. No IPv6 as of yet). Have you disabled roaming network?

What ENAY said. I think there are many,many years of life in XP yet.

Just re-read your post no linux computer (was thinking of crossover the Windows emulater). You was talking about a patch 'crossover' cable.

Is there any way to see what IP the game is setting you?

Lol yes just a crossover cable, nothing fancy.
Its 2 windows PCs XP 1 vista, nothing to do with linux.

(However, neither pc has a problem talking to my main linux PC V6 or not. (linux does support V6, ubuntu at least does)) I did have a problem before running stuff from my server but that was the UAC stopping that. This is now working with UAC disabled.

Yes it is, it works pretty easily. There are a few things you have to figure out that are slightly different than XP but it's not too crazy.

Theres a flaw in Samba use the CIFS file system. oh and you can play lan games with Vista and XP. (I know I've just done it with Conquest: Frontier wars. With LLTD and UAC enabled.

Does your router support port Triggering? If you have MS Messenger I can talk you through it or email

Yes it does, but i am not using the router, i was originally using a crossover cable, with a simple pair of static ips and Subnetmsk. This i have got working now (it was ipV6 on the vista machine causing problems, thanks for that tip :)

I would like to try at some point setting it up on the wireless but i feat the wireless is too unstable in vista at the moment, so will try and find a better driver.
PS:How would port triggering help here as im not leaving my lan, and that other tip about CIFS, is this for the problem with the game or the UAC access to my filserver? - im a little confused :/

CIFS = UAC File access to your server (thats if the sever is on your LAN

Samba AFAIK is no longer the being updated

Rightyho ill have a readin' sesh
Thanks Dawlane, you have been very helpful :)

Here's how I got the lan gaming to work

NOTE: I have set my router to assign Static IP's for all devices.

Vista (this is hard wired no wireless but it should be the same :-)
In Network and Share Center under the Tasks list on the right select "Manage network connections"

Bring up the properties for the network connection.
Bring up the "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)"
Click the Advanced... button
In the IP Settings make sure the Default gateway is the address of your router (and Metric is set to Automatic)
now in the WINS tab section change the the Default to Enable NetBios over TCP/IP

Thats the Vista bit done

Now for XP (Now this is wireless :-)

Bring up the Properties for the Network connection.
Add these protocols
NWLink NetBios
NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBios Compatible Transport Protocol
Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder (this is a down load from Microsoft and is only avalible to genuine Windows XP users)
the rest is basically the same as Vista

Bring up the "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)"
Click the Advanced... button
In the IP Settings make sure the Default gateway is the address of your router (and Metric is set to Automatic)
now in the WINS tab section change the the Default to Enable NetBios over TCP/IP

You may then have to Disable and the restart you LAN connections.
After that any problem will be down to your router

Glad you got it working. I want to play Icewind Dale II with my missus and she has upgraded to a Vista Laptop (I'm on XP) but I haven't tried connecting yet. It worked fine in XP to XP before.

Goodluck, i reccommend:

- an entire evening with her not about to ask "is it ready yet!"
- a brown paper bag to breathe into to calm down,
- a stressball,
- an emergency length of crossed CAT5 (to test the bare minimum, not to hang yourself! however tempted you will be:)
- asprin
- dawlane on MSN

LOL :P

haha :-) OK so that's the advice for a romantic evening sorted, what about getting LAN working on Vista ;-)

Yeah I'll sort it myself before saying "hey let's play this game"

I should warn you that NetBios is not the best way to do things. And I forgot you can enable IPv6 for XP.

Here's a link for some reading
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg1005.mspx

I'm now going to see if I can lan gaming without the need for NetBios. (not very sercure if you have Shared Printers and Folders)

Hmm, I'd like to ask some advice on this. I used to play Icewind Dale II with my partner, Helen, and we both had XP. We used TCP IP and it was fine.

Now she has Vista (we have the same router and I have the same PC) and it doesn't work. (Single player is fine)

Basically if she tries to START a new game or JOIN my game using TCP/IP the game says "please wait" or similar then suddenly the desktop is shown (in the wrong res) and the music is still playing but I can't alt + tab back to the game (right clicking it on the task bar gives only Close) - So I have to end task on it. The first time this happened it was actually Windows Firewall so I "unblocked" IcewindDale II and tried again, but with the same crappy results.

Since then I've switched off the firewall and also my virus killer. Same result.

I thought about trying IPX but it is DISABLED in the game types menu. So I follwed the advice posted about here by dawlane but still no IPX in the game - am I missing something? Perhaps that advice wasn't to get IPX going.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanx...

OK I tried running it in Windowed mode on Vista and it doens't crash it. As I can get IPX working I tried TCP/IP and I click Join on the Vista laptop, enter my XP PC's IP address and click Done and after a long time trying it says "Cannot connect to the game session".

Weirdly if I use Join again it shows "Jake's Adventure" which is the name of the adventure on my XP PCs so that sounds good, but when I click it and then done I get the cannot connect message straight away.

I can see the C drive on my XP PC through networks so I know that it's there an it works. I know my IP address is correct too...Both PCs are on the same workgroup. Nothing has changed in the router since the XP laptop played the game OK.

Sniff, this is sad :-(

Perhaps someone has a simple free modern TCP/IP game/test app that works from Vista/XP that I can test out or some pointers as to what the network settings should be?

thx

Exact same problem as i said above (me and th missus play co-op b.gate)

We kind of gave up in the end trying to get vista to talk to XP for baulders gate (and i'm an MS cert. IT engineer so i should know how it *should* work). I tried everything I (and dawlane) could think of, disabled all firewalls & vista "security", ipV6 removed, disabled wireless and just cables to router - still no joy (vista tries to do some weird analysing crap with my router).
I eventually got it to work with a basic crossover cable, static IPs. However, Vista then decided to disable my network card halfway through a game and would not re-enable, after that I was so pissed i went to bed and have not tried this vista again tried since.

Since then I managed to get baulders gate working by using a Win98 virtual machine on Linux and its working great. You got a MAC right? try doing something similar.

OK thx for the update.

Yeah could try it on my Macbook running XP haha :-) I haven't looked into that.

So you got it working on a crossover cable with static IPs (and no ipv6 right?), could try that I guess but what a fag unplugging from the router and plugging it into each computre every time instead of just using wireless.

This is just another annoying Vista thing. They've prevented coop on the most classic RPGs ever :-(

Mabe if we can get it working we can have a four-some (in the gaming sense)


LOL! imagine attempting THAT in vista if it doesnt even work right on a lan!!! : http://www.absolutely-uk.com/eric/

haha. Vista is a gaming contraceptive.

Been googling all night, wasted hours on this.

Found these threads (amongst a zillion others) but no results yet:

http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=545106&forum=17&sp=105 (see the bottom post on page 8)

http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=583260&forum=10

Hey when you got it working on crossovers, were you using IPX or TCP/IP? I assume NOT IPX as I can't get that option to enable in Vista.

I used tcp because IPX doesnt seem to exist anymore in vista.
As i use wireless for everthing else, i simply set up both wired lan cards for basic IPs as follows. I used another subnet mask as .255.0 seemed to be conficting somehow with my other adaptor (wireless) but it works as 255.0 if wireless disabled (Very odd) :

pc1:
1.1.1.1
255.255.0.0
no gateway needed

pc2:
1.1.1.2
255.255.0.0
no gateway needed

As i say, it worked great until vista decided to disable the network card in mid game for no reason and no message as to why :/

Make sure to disable the powersaving option for the NIC's, or it has the potential of disappearing on you... Especially if you're on a laptop and running on battery power.

D4M4N, you should use one of the dedicated LAN IP ranges with a proper subnet rather than using illegal ranges.

I suggest you configure your IPs to:

PC1: IP: 192.168.1.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
PC2: IP: 192.168.1.2 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

You will probably find you have less problems using this range as it will not conflict with existing internet ranges.

Darkheart

Thanks (genuinely), but i've tried many many times using it across my router :)
However, Those ranges you mention are a typical home router range, which is not relevant for crossover.

Read what i wrote above the above, 1.1.1 is not an illegal range for a 2 PC port crossover. Bytes 1 2 & 3 can be (almost) anything you like as long as they're the same on both.

That is what i was saying above, ive tried it on the lan, many times and many ways, it doesnt work. The ONLY way i could find to get it to work was with the cable. Weirdly it failed when i used the default subnet with wireless enabled as well, but worked with 0.0 ?!?!

Its got to be a bug or something in vista home editon, or b.gate is doing something incompatable. (v10 emulation of v6 directplay mabe?)
I will try the powersave, but the port is constantly sending and recieving data so doubt it is this.


[edit]
As a second test, i thought id try icewind dale a try, to see if its the same with normal network settings, but it wont even work, gives an 'assertion' error when you try and start a game :( - although i suspect this has nothing to do with the network.

Cool I'll try that thanks. Yeah I have seen network cards powersave before, it is often an option in the settings for the network card.

All right Grey something is wrong here. I've stayed quiet until now ;]

I have played Icewind Dale over a Vista/XP network successfully. Don't ask me what I did right though? Just standard settings everywhere using TCP. Though it was a while ago, it -may- have been when I was using a beta. In which case I had UAC off. Not that that should impact anything. And I have two network cards in the Vista machine and the link to the XP is going thru a switch hub.

I do have problems with C&C3 though (every other game I can play just fine) - computers refuse to see each other.

hmm OK thanks. I tried turning off UAC to no avail. I'll borrow a crossover cable and try a simple setup soon.

Hotcakes,

Is that IWD V2 or V1 as i couldnt get V1 to run at all without an assertion error.

Try leaving DHCP Enabled and using the "Alternate Configuration" settings. You only need the IP address, Subnet mask and default gateway. Do this also for any other machine. You dont have to mess with the WINS settings or use Netbios.

Oh and make sure Network Discovery is on in the Network and Sharing Center

I don't think that there is any IPv6 capable hardware in Europe yet, so you can disable it for the time being.

I'm going to try some other games to see if they work (Conquest: Frontier wars was an oldish game just to test if it could be done).
I do know that some networked games have software protection to stop multiple copies for the same installed disk being detected. In other words you have to have a licesned game disk for each machine.

One point the router I'm using is a Netgear MAX Range WNR854T. This router allows me to assign the IP address for each MAC address of every NIC.

This is how the wired cards have been configured, so when they are crossed it resorts to the set IPs.

Net discovery is on.

I suspect this is it problem causing that assertion error in IWD.

Unfortunately my router only allows me to reserve an IP on the device name which is crap if a machine has more than one device, but i will double check this.

I think most problems can be related to the hardware side or software firewalls ( which could explain why some have Vista LAN gaming working while other have problems ).

If I was still connected to a phone line DSL and had the time I would have tried a USB modem and a Network Hub (or just the Hub if I can find it) to see what results I would get (with UAC enabled)).

If every one is sure that the PC's settings are correct then it must be hardware related.

Grey Alien. IPX/SPX is not supported in Vista and some how I don't think it ever will be. The "How I got LAN gaming to work" was a first attempt to use NetBios to resolve naming/IP issues ( I found the alternative by using the "Alternate Configuration" dialog box ). And I think my router may have helped a lot.

Conquest: Frontier wars reports the IP address of the machine its running on and for some reason was reporting the address of the IP address give to me by my ISP. So if you have a game that reports the IP address this give it a try.

It isn't the hardware, both linux and XP run network games perfectly on the same machine (i finaly found my xp disk & put that sucker on there!- yay!)

Its gotta be either a vista or driver fault, not hardware.

(Also, all firewalls were completely disabled during all of my experiments described from the top.)

Im just annoyed i now need to TRIPPLE boot because vista simply isn't doing what its supposed to.

Glad you found your XP disk :-)

If remember you said Vista is on a Fujitsu laptop ( let me know if I'm wrong ).
Does it have any Vendor specific software for managing Networking. Some machines come with such software that basically screws things up. I had to sort out a laptop that kept losing its wireless connection and in the end I turn off the Vendors roaming network feature.

Icewind Dale 1. Expansion pack and latest patches. And crack for convenience. Vista 32 bit Home Premium. Again, may have been with UAC off.


Don't be so sure. This problem is becoming more widespread as more and more people are taking up Vista - and it seems to be happenning almost randomly. I do think it is due to a combination of version of Vista, software installed, drivers and hardware, however the actual component at fault is likely to be Vista. It could be drivers, but I think it's more likely it's Vista. Hopefully SP1 will offer a solution.

I wouldn't be surprised if the networking was nerfed so that they could 'enhance' the stability of it in Longhorn.

D4NM4N did you try changing the NTLMv2. If not have a look at thishttp://sgdotnet.org/blogs/maungmaung/archive/2007/03/30/Windows-VIsta-Harden-Security-_2800_Part-3_2900_.aspx

dawlane: Ok thanks for the confirmation of your experience. I may fiddle some more if I find time. Or just try out a cross-over cable job.

Hmm, mabe it was the patches and crack that did it. How can i tell what version of the software it is, its not displayed anywhere on the menu screen/startup etc.

I didnt to be honest, I may keep it for reference if i ever need to try again. Right now ive wasted so much time on it im sick of the sight of the "blue polo" so now i have a working XP installed im gonna use that for now.
Again thanks for all your help.

A lot of games neglect to do that, until it's been patched and THEN it's reported somewhere... but I forget where. My file properties are reporting IDMain.exe to be at 1.4.1.0... 1.41 patch for Heart of Winter can be found here:
http://dlh.net/cgi-bin/dp.cgi?lang=eng&ref=&sys=&cap=i

dlh.net is an awesome resource.

Ahaa! thanks :)