Hail All,
Another multi-player connection problem here, I was just wondering if some new Micro$oft patch or update may have caused this? There seems to be an increase in the number of connection problems across the MW4 world. I have tried all of the suggestions on these forums and several others. None of the port opening/closings seem to work for me. BTW am running XP, Zone Alarm, no Windows Firewall on a cable modem no router, just stright from the wall to COM21 modem to comp. Any other suggestions? again could it be a Win update?
Thanks

... the DirectX 9.0b update maybe? Hmmm ... no idea, haven't installed it myself -
we'll know sooner or later sure someone else installed it and can tell something about.

Well, if you use your modem directly, according to the book you should have no problems.

*throws book away*

Did you try to disable zonealarm completely?

Or do you use dxport?

The only thing I could possible think of is that dxport doesn't work with 9.0b anymore - just a very wild guess.

Sorry - at loss here.

Yes on the disable zonealarm. Not sure on the DX9, I tried to do a restore point before the install but ran into several startup problems. And what does dxport do? That is the puffin soft prog right? I have not tried it, thought it was more for routers etc... Thanks for the suggestions.

RLTW

It won't help you if your connection worked, and then suddenly failed. Was just a random guess,
one could use dxport also to make ones zonealarm setup "more nice". Basically, it simplifies
router setup for mercs and allows several people behind a firewall/router to play mercs
online.

Maybe someone else has installed dirext 9.0b on XP successfully w/o problems? Then at least
you would know that it's not the cause.

... you might want to check this article over at microsoft if you run ICS:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;EN-US;327299

good luck

I for one would like to thank ya Panzer for postin that link. Was a bit of a hassle to do all that.. but hey, I can play mercs online again so Woohoo!

What a freakin round about ......., only M$ or the company I work for would think that this fix is OK. Fix the FIX dangit!

dunno what to tell ya Thy, if fixed my problem.

Well thanks for the research, but still a nogo here. I guess I will just hope M$ will send out another update that might fix the prob.

RLTW

Well all frustration level is rising, lack of online destruction is making me edgy

I used one of the uninstall progs for dx9 and it worked but still no connection. Got a restore point to work before recent update but still no connection.

Maybe I am not opening my ports as required. Can someone give me step by step instruction. The two things I have tried are TCP/IP filtering allowing all and turning off the filtering. And Network properties--> Services--> Settings and here is where I tried to add the ports to be opened still confused about the external port and internal port (I think same port number) and the IP address is that my IP address or the Zone. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

You're not playing through a router, so you shouldn't have to worry about Ports at all, Timmy.

To be honest, I think I'd call my cable provider. If you're hooking straight to the cable modem from your comp, and ZoneAlarm has got Mercs on its list of 'allowed applications' then the problem almost has to be on your provider's end.

Also, make sure to start Mercs in a sub window, not full screen. You may be missing one of several ZoneAlarm requests to allow a connection here or there to go through. Make sure you tell it to save the ( Allow ) request permenantly.

Heheehehe i see someone else has played the *Find the hidden Zone Alarm YES button*

Timmy, are you connecting fine to the web? I had a sim prob a while back, i could connect to a few things online, MS messenger, a couple of sites, and thats it. Turned out something was wrong with the cable service. No DNS or something like that was listed. Finding it has something to do with the command prompt, like running a tracert. Maybe someone here can give you the command cus i cant rem it

Thank you for the recommendations and help.

I will try and call my cable company, wait is a long time up here in Alaska though

Yes I can connect to the internet just fine, downloads no prob and msnmsgr connects as well. What is this DNS you are talking about? and anyone got the cmd line (tracecert??) MOK was talking about.

I removed Zonealarm to see if that helped and it was a nogo. So now just running Win ICF. Thanks all

Here is the usage statement for tracert, go to a command prompt to run this.

C:\>tracert

Usage: tracert [-d] [-h maximum_hops] [-j host-list] [-w timeout] target_name

Options:
-d Do not resolve addresses to hostnames.
-h maximum_hops Maximum number of hops to search for target.
-j host-list Loose source route along host-list.
-w timeout Wait timeout milliseconds for each reply.



You will enter the tracert command followed by the IP address of the server.

This will give you a list of hops showing the latency between your system and each hop. Or it will show you that the route is blocked.



What part of Alaska are you in? Was in Anchorage for 3 years a long time ago. Really enjoyed my time up there.

Shiv,
Thanks for the quick response, Fairbanks, Yes very nice so far, just moved here.

I am pretty illiterate when it comes to this networking thing, so bear with me....do I imput my IP address, because it changes, I think is is assigned by an DHCP.

Trying now

Need to get the IP address of the server you are trying to connect to.

shiro.teambanzai.net is 216.77.87.100
ronin.teambanzai.net is 208.32.57.55
yarr.teambanzai.net is 204.157.6.23

Have not seen shiro up in awhile so try yarr or ronin. So you should try tracert 204.157.6.23 or use the name tracert yarr.teambanzai.net.

I get this result from here:

C:\>tracert yarr.teambanzai.net

Tracing route to yarr.teambanzai.net [204.157.6.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <10 ms <10 ms <10 ms 192.168.
2 10 ms 20 ms 10 ms 10.104.144.1
3 30 ms 50 ms 51 ms srp1-0.orldflwrpk-rtr2.cfl.rr.com [24.95.224.39]

4 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms srp4-0.orldfldvsn-rtr3.cfl.rr.com [24.95.224.9]

5 20 ms 20 ms 30 ms pop2-tby-P0-2.atdn.net [66.185.136.189]
6 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms bb1-tby-P0-3.atdn.net [66.185.138.208]
7 60 ms 60 ms 50 ms bb2-atm-P7-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.245]
8 60 ms 61 ms 70 ms bb2-cha-P6-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.31]
9 60 ms 80 ms 80 ms bb2-ash-P13-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.50]
10 50 ms 50 ms 50 ms pop3-ash-P1-0.atdn.net [66.185.148.211]
11 90 ms 80 ms 90 ms Aleron.atdn.net [66.185.136.14]
12 70 ms 70 ms 70 ms ge3-1.as.alrherva.aleron.net [205.198.0.78]
13 91 ms 60 ms 70 ms ecgn7.ecgnetwork.com [204.157.6.23]

Trace complete.


Each line shows a hop or router that packets from your system must pass throught to get to the server. The times in columns 2 3 and 4 shows the latency from your system to that particular router or device. In my case I have pretty good response time all the way out to the yarr server.

Give that a try and see if what the results are. BTW: 30 hops is about max. If you are more than 30 hops from the server you won't get there.

shiv,
Here is what I got, don't have the slightest what it means but I did not see anything blocked per say.

comments,


Tracing route to yarr.teambanzai.net [204.157.6.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 39 ms 27 ms 19 ms 1-24-237-24.gci.net [24.237.24.1]
2 42 ms 19 ms 27 ms 1-140-165-209.gci.net [209.165.140.1]
3 58 ms 50 ms 60 ms 194-129-165-209.gci.net [209.165.129.194]
4 59 ms 60 ms 69 ms 209-129-165-209.gci.net [209.165.129.209]
5 65 ms 57 ms 57 ms 500.POS2-2.GW8.SEA1.ALTER.NET [157.130.182.5]
6 58 ms 48 ms 79 ms 109.ATM2-0.XR2.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.105.222]
7 61 ms 71 ms 56 ms 0.so-0-0-0.XL2.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.106.233]
8 59 ms 63 ms 73 ms 0.so-7-0-0.TL2.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.2.134]
9 79 ms 81 ms 75 ms 0.so-5-0-0.TL2.SCL2.ALTER.NET [152.63.1.34]
10 83 ms 78 ms 75 ms 0.so-4-0-0.XL2.PAO1.ALTER.NET [152.63.54.82]
11 87 ms 76 ms 76 ms POS1-0.XR2.PAO1.ALTER.NET [152.63.54.78]
12 84 ms 77 ms 80 ms 188.ATM7-0.GW9.PAO1.ALTER.NET [152.63.52.189]
13 88 ms 76 ms 78 ms aleronPAO-gw.customer.alter.net [157.130.150.70]

14 78 ms 76 ms 76 ms ge5-0.cr.paxpalca.aleron.net [205.198.10.77]
15 145 ms 141 ms 140 ms ge3-1.as.alrherva.aleron.net [205.198.0.78]
16 144 ms 139 ms 144 ms ecgn7.ecgnetwork.com [204.157.6.23]

Trace complete.

try disabling it. Configuring ICF to work with directplay would be a real chore. You'll be better of "teaching" zonealarm by running mercs in a window, as suggested before.

As said by others, you shouldn't need any special setting/proggy when you're connected directly to the internet,
so, if that still doesn't help, your best way to go is to contact your ISP. That the game stopped working after
an update may have been just a coincidence. However, you could check this using start => execute => dxdiag

(Sorry, I'm not sure if you already said you did this, if you did, discard the rest)

=> I'm backtranslating here, so stuff will be named slightly different on your PC <=

... click the network/networking tab:

You should find some info under "registered directplay service providers"

=> "Directplay TCP/IP service provider" should be "OK"
=> "Internet TCP/IP connection for directplay" should be "OK"

... and under "registered changeable directplay programs"

=> Mechwarrior Mercenaries should be "OK"

Good luck!

That is a good traceroute. The times you are showing are good. If you start seeing 300 and up on the times that can start giving you problems. It also shows that you have a route to the server. So the basic networking appears to be fine.

Check the items Panzerfritz and the others suggested.

Do you have another system available you can try this with? If you do that should help isolate the problem to your system or the ISP.

Hail All,
Well I am back up! I guess it just took a fresh install, though I had to uninstall, and use regvac to get all leftover registry entries before it would work. I guess somthing just became corrupt in the game for me. So a posibility for someone else maybe. Thank you all for your help and assistance.

See you in my crosshairs

Yay!

Once again we've managed to aggressively flollop and wallow around all over a problem until it was fixed.

(generally through some method completely unrelated to our suggestions - but damnit, 'Yay!' for us anyway)

... do we get the famous "been there, done that, got the T-Shirt" T-Shirts then

In order to celebrate the solution of this problem, I might just create a :reinstall mercs: smilie

Make sure it is specific to a Microsoft computer. That is the only OS that "shut up and reboot" and "reinstall the OS" are the number one and two tech support solutions.