TCP/IP problems - can anyone help?

Hi there,

I've been experiencing some really aggravating problems hosting and connecting to TCP/IP games in the last couple of days. What I've been seeing, either connecting from a client on my PC to a server on the net, or hosting on my PC for clients on the net, is the following. The client is able to connect to a game on a particular port and upload a Pretender. Once the game is started, the client can find and connect to the game as far as selecting a nation and enterring their password, but then the client hangs at the sparkly screen we all know.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that occassionally the client has connected, and players have been able to complete a few turns before things ground to a halt.

Now I do have a firewall, which is part of my internet router and I'm able to control port forwarding on it to allow connections to games I'm hosting. I don't have firewall software running on my PCs, and the Windows XP firewall is turned off. Anyway, firewalls don't in general block the Dom2 client, do they?

I've even tried hosting a game on one PC on my local network and had the same problems connecting to it from another PC on the same network!

So, a few questions.

Has anyone else run into a problem that seemed similar, and if so, what was the cause?

Does Dom2 need any other ports open apart from the ones you set when you create hosted games?

Can anyone suggest any diagnostic tests I might try. (I've tried completely disabling my firewall, scanning for viruses, disabling my AV software, reinstalling Dom2, rebooting, and probably a few things besides - but any suggestions would be grateful received).

Mark the Miserable

P.S. Oh yes, just to be clear. It's Dom2.16 on Windows XP SP2.