Unable to establish network

[falco1029]

My brother cant do multiplayer, says it cant establish network, and it cant connect to host. he has internet connection, and all other internet things are working fine, any idea why this may be?

[falco1029]

anyone going to help?

[colema19]

Who is he connecting to? If the host is behind a firewall, then it has to have a port(2606 by default) forwarded through the firewall to it.

[Bouska]

The game gives me "Error Initializing Network" just clicking on LAN. It won't let me do anything but hit 'enter' which kicks me back to the main menu...

I get the same error when attempting to host an internet game, which I could understand might be due to router settings or something, but to error out on the LAN side?

I don't get it.

[falco1029]

right, it does it for LAN games, which shouldnt happen.

[Cresho]

So what you are saying is that you cannot set one game as a server within a lan network and host a game because the client can't find the game server withink the lan network?

Bah!

anyway, i just upgraded my brothers pc with an updated direct x 9 compliant video card. I am patiently waiting for the patch so i can play with my bro.

Man!

[Soulshorne]

Odd, is it a brother thing?

Same exact situ... I can log on and create a game, but when my brother simply clicks on multiplayer... irregardless of type.. all he gets is "unable to connect to network".

As an ex-tech, I will try solo... just was hoping for some guidance/insight/past experiences to narrow down the problem.

If I can fix it, I promise to post... if others have previously, please do not do the usual newling habit of hearing how to fix/figuring it out and not sharing.

Once had a bud exclaim on how forums were always so negative. Anothour friend quickly piped up: "Of COURSE they are. People only log on to complain about problems... once they are fixed, they never log back on to thank or share, they forget that part. All they want to do is play... they do not log on to help others, doubly so once a problem they have faced has been fixed".

I will not do so (mainly because I realized back then I oft did just as he stated).

If others read this, and figure it out before I can, PLEASE make me look the fool and beat me to the fix.

Thanks in advance!

~Soulshorne

[Soulshorne]

BTW, it seems to freeze his entire system up, he cannot even go back to main menu, but rather has to CTL+ALT+DEL to shut down a running program (XP).

[Ult_Dragoon]

Ok, I had the same problem but I think I fixed it, and here is how.

I hit the LAN button and it gave me the usual error, I then hit enter to go back to the main menu, I hit LAN again, and got the error, so I hit enter again and went back to the main menu, so I hit LAN again this time with a few chosen words to express myself, and it worked.

Try just entering over and over again, see if it works.

And if it adds to the conspiricy at all, I too was trying to access it with my brother.

I am also sure that it has nothing to do with anyones LAN connection as I am sure many of us can do other games over LAN. So I am thinking this is a bug with the game.

[Terry East]

My LAN works just fine. I suspect you have some sort of firewall issue. Something like Norton or Zonealarm will kill your LAN request before it can even try to connect. Also, make sure that you can "see" both computers on the network. I'm playing behind a router and after telling Norton to allow the program it works good. If you have something like this you may need to alt-tab out of DL to the desktop to click on a button. Also, XPSP2 has many security "features" that could be the cause of this problem. If you do alt-tab you will have to close DL after probably. I never could get back into it after tabbing out but at least after that once I could play multiplayer.

[tnoyce]

It may also be corrupted\missing DirectPlay components. In particular, I know the "Error Initializing Network" can be caused by an unregistered Directx file - dpnet.dll.

My system exhibited very similar symptoms. Although I wasn't seeing the 'Unable to initialize network' error, When I tried to host, my system would run for a while, then DL would crash to the desktop. When I watched my system resources, I saw the memory use continue to climb, until it hit 100%. I noticed that system performance slowed WAY down. Once DL crashed, everything picked up to normal speed again. On my XP SP1 system, 1.3 worked fine. Disabling my firewall did nothing.

Run DXDiag, and go to the Networking tab. Select the entry for TCP/IP, and
try to start a server. After a few seconds, you should see a "DxDiag Direct Play Chat" window open, if all is ok. If instead gives you one of the wonderful "This program must be shut down" or "page fault" type of messages, most likely your Directx 9 install is corrupted. Mine WAS corrupted, even though DXDiag did not show any obvious errors.

If the entries state that there are problems with the registry, you will have to register a file to restore them:

Open windows explorer
go to C:\windows\system32
Look for a file called dpnet.dll
Right-click, select "Open With"
Click on "Browse"
Look for C:\windows\system32\regsvr32.exe
Click "ok"
You should see a "Registration of dpnet.dll succeeded" message.

If the entries for directPlay are now complete, re-try establishing a
session (re-run the direct play test). If it works, great!

Otherwise, you may have to do a re-install of the OS.

I found that the only way I could get rid my issue, was to re-install XP SP1, then re-apply SP2 on the system which was experiencing the problem. Once I did this, everything worked 100%. Even got rid of the annoying flicker I had previously with my ATI 9800 pro video card.

I am now successfully running DL version 1.3, on two systems - XP SP1 and XP SP2. I played with a friend of mine for several hours last weekend. No network-related issues. Gameplay was ok - no major lags at least with only two of us. I don't have more than two systems which run DL right now, so I cannot comment beyond that.

Good Luck!