Can't play Emperor online

[Ryan]

I purchased EBFD (from new) over a year ago and had the usual problems that were solved with +w. Until a few days ago I was relegated to the information B-road (56K). I now have working a 512/256 ADSL from Pipex via a Alcatel Speedtouch 330. It's USB but it works. I'm not using ICS or any other Internet sharing method. My laptop meets the EBFD spec (PIII 866 512mb) and runs W2K sp4. My AV is McAfee.

As i'm a big fan of Dune/DuneII/EBFD I now want to play EBFD online. I installed the Westwood Shared Internet Components from the EBFD CD and registered via the 'Emperor Essentials' suggested URL (http://www.dune2k.com/forum/index.php/topic,10549.0.html). I even confirmed my account using the URL emailed to me by EA.

I have not been able to connect to WOL. In fact complains about an "invalid" serial after displaying "Downloading channels" for ages. I have never shared this serial and it should be valid.

I found Olafs server via Google and downloaded the latest XWIS tool before sucessfully connecting to 62.93.200.61. As soon as Leo1990 and agreed to play me my laptop BSOD. Since then I can't connect to XWIS (despite http://62.93.200.61:4005/ showing ative EBFD/RA2 etc players). EBFD connects to Olafs server and offers Quick or Custom. Clicking Custom displays a large menu with navigation buttons on th RHS. After 20 seconds EBFD displays "Error: Westwood online disconnected" before dumping me at the logon screen.

I have been able to use the XWIS tool to connect directly to Ords server (62.131.170.215) but there weren't any players on it

I have unsucessfully tried connecting to WOL and XWIS both from home and work with and without my Agnitum Outlook firewall. Re-installing Westwood Shared Internet Components hasn't helped.

I don't own any other Westwood games so I can't test them against WOL/XWIS.

I only tried different nicks after things stopped working. Can anyone help?

[Dunenewt]

Were you on mIRC the other day?

[Ryan]

Yes. I think you suggested I post the problem here. Didn't realise that you lived close enough fix it for me.

[Dunenewt]

Yup, that was me...although I can't help any further. So it's only XWIS and WOL you can't connect to, but ORDS works?

[Ryan]

I don't know why it ever worked ??? (1st time only on XWIS and always on Ords server) because I've had to re-install Emperor to get it work properly.

It now connects to WOL, XWIS and (probably) Ords servers. Last year I had moved the Westwood folder from C to D and while Emperor worked stand-alone it may have nobbled online play. Also my nics_<computername>.ini only listed the loopback address (127.0.0.1) and now lists all my IP addresses.

So I can finally play online and learn what little I actually know. <mental note>Facs first</mental note> ;D

[Edit]

I didn't know whether I should have started a new thread but...

What ports do I have to open on my personal firewall (Agnitum Outpost) to allow online play. EBFD seems to request lots of ports and Outpost displays a popup on the desktop for each. And I can't see the desktop within Emperor.