LAN Help!!!!!!!

ok, me and my friend are trying to play some games.. 2 specifically, Counterstrike:condition zero, and Starcraft Broodwar. Isn't there some sort of a way that we can directly connect our laptops together and play via lan cable? each time we hook it up, it never works, and our little icon on the bottom of the screen says Limited or no connectivity...? we dont wanna connect to the internet or anything, we just plugged i an eithernet cable and we just can't get it to work... Please help! were in desprite need! HELP!

 

Make sure you're not using a standard ethernet patch cable, to connect directly from notebook to notebook you need an ethernet crossover cable which allows direct connections without a hub or router etc. Unless it specifies "crossover" it is a standard patch cable.

 

ive got both, tryed them both, tryed a hub (with 2 kinds of both) and can't get anything to work... verry depressing... what dose it mean by limited or no connectivity? why cant this work? is it a simple problem? please help!

 

My brother and I used crossover to play games together all the time, we didn't have any trouble. Limited or no connectivity means there was a problem and XP was unable to establish a connection and assign a local IP address, usually because of firewalls or settings.

The easiest way to set it up is to go into your network connection, select the TCP protocol, and specify the IP address for each computer, 192.168.0.1 for the first and 192.168.0.2 for the second, everything else will be set automatically. The protect my computer option should be unchecked in the advanced menu. Both computers will also need to be in the same Workgroup under the computer name tab in system properties, just hit change. Reboot and you should be ready to go.

 

ok, i did what u said about the TCP protocol.. changed them... didn't have a 'protect my computer' option in the advanced menu...?.. with the workgroups.. completely didn't understand that.. but when i changed the TCP thingy.. my icon for any connection dissappeard completely... untill we dissconnected our cables, then it said connection disconnected...

 

Sorry bout that, didn't want to assume you didn't know what I meant. Right click on my computer then choose properties then Computer Name then Change. At the bottom you'll see Workgroup. Both your pcs must have the same name, anything you like just identical. You may or may not need to do the manual settings for TCP but it usually ensures you IP address are set when it connects. Change your workgroup names, reboot and try it again. Firewalls can block, we both used Zone Alarm and had to turn them off when connecting. Also, the computer names must be different.

 

ok, well, he pooped out on me and is asleep now (we stayed up all night) and so we'll try that later, i dont think the workgroup name was the same.. i think my 'w' was caped and his wasn't.. thanks

 

I know the feeling, I'm still up myself. You're welcome

 

I don't believe the name is case sensitive, so that shouldn't be the problem (will be surprised if it was).

Aren't these games designed for online play? If so, did you setup one user as the "server" and the other a "guest"? If you used a hub/switch and not a broadband router/switch (one designed for sharing a high-speed internet connection), then that could explain why it didn't work. Hubs don't assign IP address and therefore will not work (game requires each unit to have an IP address). As Anubis explained how to manually enter a static IP address this will do what the broadband router will do (DHCP assigns an IP address to each connected computer). This should work fine, as long as all your settings are correct.

-Vb-

 

I was just reading through this thread again and I wanted to ask ya if the box for "Show icon in notification area when connected" was unchecked. Because that would make sense with the issue you described. If unchecked you would connect but not show, when you disconnect it will show pop up disconnected.


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