LAN blocked somehow while playing AOE2: the Conquerors
Hello! I've read pretty much all of the support topics for AOC, but I have not been able to find an answer. My problem is that when I run my conquerors game and try to do anything that has to do with the LAN, the program makes me wait for ever and the music starts skipping. The circle keeps turning but nothing ever happens. The application has to be killed through the task manager. There are 2 processes named age2_x1 that are running: the exe and an icd. The one that has to be killed is the icd. If i only kill the exe one, nothing happens and the game is still locked. I have windows 7 64bit (the game is emulated to 32 bits). I am trying to play with a vista 32bit pc that runs perfectly fine, can host and join games, but not the games that are hosted on the win7 laptop. It sees the games but cannot join them. The win7 laptop locks all the time, so it's impossible to see any games, join or host. When I click the TCP/IP through LAN option for multiplayer, the game starts to freeze or locks. When I click the option TCP/IP through direct play and search for games on the ip of the host (the windows vista pc) it freezes then. The thing here is that after reading A LOT of posts about AOE2 multiplayer problems, I realized that the problem is within windows 7. I have tried enabling-disabling services in win7: -UPnP discovery; its been off and on, nothing happens. -SSDP, on and off, nothing happens -fdrespub, on and off, nothing happens (basically all the steps from http://forums.techarena.in/windows-vista-games/1038849.htm ) I have also turned off the windows firewall in both of the computers. I have turned off the firewall in the router/modem (I know this has nothing to do, but still I had to troubleshoot) and nothing happens. I have left and rejoined the homegroup. No difference whatsoever. I have opened all ports through the advanced function in windows firewall and nothing works, I have disabled ipv6 and it still freezes. I have rebooted with win7 safe mode with networking, but Conquerors won't launch in these settings. I've done a clean boot only with microsoft services and it still freezes. I've ran the game with Compatibility mode for windows 98 all the way to windows vista, not any difference. I've ran the game as an n administrator and it keeps freezing. I've tried hamachi and it does not make any difference. It just freezes with a different IP. The only way to get rid of the game locking is by reinstalling it, but as soon as I click on Multiplayer-LAN it locks again, and every time I click on Multiplayer it goes straight to LAN and locks again. So therefore the only way to get rid of that is to reinstall. After all this troubleshooting, I noticed its got to be something from win7 itself. I just can not find any other clues online as to how this new operating system manages connections. I'm guessing it must be a service that is locking the game, but I don't know what is can possibly be. Should I turn all services on and see what happens? Any clues? I'd really appreciate the help, this is becoming more like a personal challenge, (and frustration that we can't play multiplayer like we used to with vista). (The problem persists independently of the game version 1.0b or 1.0c; I am all up to date in windows update. I connect to my LAN through wireless, but wired still freezes the game. My router is an Arris Telephony modem WRT54g. ps1. My problem is practically the same as http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistagaming/thread/11d919c6-731a-495b-bbb2-b7816e8a38b7 but still, there was no solution for him.
October 18th, 2010 2:37am

OK ! sorry for answering to myself but after hours of working around with it, I found the problem: UPnP had to be disabled on the ROUTER. I had disabled it as a service, but not from the router. This fixed everything. Before that, I set up all my computers in the local network with static ip's (with the method from portforward.com; NOT from the router) I'm leaving this here for anyone that needs it. There are a lot of helpless gamers out there. BTW, the color issue is fixed very simply in win7 by opening the "screen resolution" window (right click on the desktop--> screen resolution). Just leave this on and it will give you perfect colors. Good luck!
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October 18th, 2010 4:10am

OK ! sorry for answering to myself but after hours of working around with it, I found the problem: UPnP had to be disabled on the ROUTER. I had disabled it as a service, but not from the router. This fixed everything. Before that, I set up all my computers in the local network with static ip's (with the method from portforward.com; NOT from the router) I'm leaving this here for anyone that needs it. There are a lot of helpless gamers out there. BTW, the color issue is fixed very simply in win7 by opening the "screen resolution" window (right click on the desktop--> screen resolution). Just leave this on and it will give you perfect colors. Good luck! Thanks. This worked. I have a D-Link WI-524 connecting 2 Windows XP machines and 2 Windows 7 machines. I disabled UPnP on the router (didn't change anything on any of the computers) and AOE2 multiplayer works on the LAN option (haven't tried the other connection options). Now I can get poned by my kids again.
January 5th, 2011 12:13am

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