A friend of mine is having trouble with his Mercs ded server. Basically, it's not advertising in Zonematch despite the "advertise this game" box being checked.

Any ideas?

I would be the friend.

The box is directly connected to the Internet.
There is no firewall or router.
The "Advertise this Game" box is checked.
It has the latest patch installed.
This is a store bought copy that is not being used for anything other than this dedicated server. I have installed it on my workstation to do some testing, however it has never been run from there.
Players can connect to it from the Internet successfully.


The OS is Windows 2000 Pro. I have shutdown what I deemed to be unecessary services on this box. Since this is a MicroShaft product, could it need a Windows service to advertise? Does anyone have information regarding this?

if you check the "sysopreadme" file in mercs root, it shows which port the server uses to advertise on zonematch

The box is exposed to the Internet. It has a registered IP address. It is sending and recieving on all ports.