Connection Time Out

[r1zeek]

Hi all
I was wondering if you could help me
I have a 2 pc network, just my pc and my friends pc (in the same room about 3 ft apart) and we have been playing LAN games on them for awhile. Recently tho I have had to reinstall windows on my machine. First time I installed XP (Home) I think I used a dodgy version of PowerStrip of a cover disc and all the resolution and refresh rates changed. I couldn't do much else but format it again and install everything over. I have only just got everything installed and I goto play Battlefield with my friend and we find that if i host a client server, his machine can't see the server and if he tries to host a client server his machine crashes before it can start. Now my friends machine has been working fine and nothing has been done to it. I also tried Vietcong and we found his machine was giving a connection timeout message whenever he tries to host a server. And then his machine can't see my server if I try to host it. The 2 machines work fine with file sharing and stuff its just on games that it won't work
Hope someone can help me

[r1zeek]

Also another bit of info which might help
I used SiS Sandra to check the network (the Network/LAN Bandwidth module) and from my PC it tell me the network is running at 9mb/s but on my friends machine it tells me the host is off-line