Launching Civ4 LAN game disconnects internal network

[Agit]

Originally I post this on Civ4 - Multiplayer & PBEM> Troubleshooting Connectivity area but I wasn’t able to get any advice so I posting it here.


Both my wife and I have been playing single player Civ4 games but now we want to play LAN multiplayer Civ4. Every time one us starts a LAN game (or Direct IP game) the other can not see the game it in the lobby. We are not running XP firewall and are connected to same Linksys router.

When we first encountered this problem I got an error/warning from Norton Ani-Virus about a port scan from 192.168.1.101 (my own machine) and my wife got the same message for her machine. I thought maybe this was the problem and created a rule to allow the port scan from my own system. This did not help.

I wasn’t sure if needed to open up the firewall ports for a LAN only game but, just in case I did and opened port 2056 on the linksys. (Per post I found here)

Well I spent a little more time tackling this LAN and found a very odd problem.

Test setup:

2 computers and 2 copies of the Civ4
I did the follow twice; once with Norton Anti-Virus auto protect ON and the second time with Norton Anti-Virus auto protect OFF.
No XP Firewall just a Linksys router
Computer A: 192.168.1.100
Computer B: 192.168.1.101

1) I have computer A ping computer B to verify network connectivity & I also have computer B ping computer A.

Results = successful

2) Launch Civ4 and Alt-Tab out to Desktop
3) I have computer A ping computer B to verify network connectivity & I also have computer B ping computer A.

Results = successful

4) Computer A creates a LAN game
5) Computer B attempts to find game after entering LAN lobby

Results = LAN game is not found

6) I Alt-Tab out to Desktop
7) I have computer A ping computer B to verify network connectivity & I also have computer B ping computer A.

Results = Unreachable destination (or Request time out) Both computers can get to internet but can not ping or browse internal network.

The only way to fix this problem and restore internal network is to reboot both computers. This totally boggles my mind. Launching Multiplayer Civ4 = dead internal network. Is anyone else encountering this network problem? Or have any suggestions?

 

[eskunk]

Agit: I experienced the exact same problem. I also conducted successful pings between the two laptops. connected via direct lan cabel and i also tried an adhoc wireless network.
once civi was open and i open the lan menu the network was down until i rebooted. Norton anitvir is installed on one machine. first start of civi4 i reported some worm thing. i did not pay attention and just clicked something. later i disabled all firewalls (windows and another one on the other laptop) and norton antivir but with no success.

I will deinstall norton and give feedback later

 

[Oceanus]

My wife and I have the exact same problem. I do not use Norton antivirus. I also have no windows firewall on, and had the same experience with pinging. I thought I was crazy.

If anyone has any news, just bumping this up. Can't for the life of me figure it out, but basically the game is valueless to us since we can't play together.

 

[vitalie]

Hi

So have you fixed the problem?

Thanks

Vit

 

[vitalie]

OK, I fixed my LAN problem. It turned out that my Kaspersky Antivirus considered Civilisation port scans as network attacks and blocked the originating IP address (I had it set to blocking mode). Thus, the local network would remain blocked until restart or until the IP address block expired (in my case I had it set to expire after 300 minutes).

I turned off IP address blocking (leaving the protection from network attacks on) and could start a LAN game.

To be on the safe side I also changed the LAN IP addresses as was suggested in another thread to 192.168.1.206 and 192.168.1.204 (not sure if this was necessary).

So, the conclusion is this: carefully check your antivirus settings, it may act as a second firewall even if you don't want it to.

Vit