thanks for your answer! i've now set up a dual bood system and tried dune 2000 in win98 and had the same problem. so win xp cant be the problem. im playing in 16 bit mode and i have a DSL connection. but there could be a problem, because i'm behind a hardware router (NAT). maybe i have to open some more ports or something. but on the other hand i can connect to westwood online, host games and start them without problems. it just hangs after about a minute. and after several minutes i get an error message that i've been disconnected from westwood chat. any suggestions? -mandark