phyler: Hi

I just bought this game because I wanted to be able to play on a LAN with my son. I've been trying all night to get it to work but so far have been unsuccessful. We have a laptop and a desktop here in the same house using the same router- I disabled the firewall on both computers. On one computer I started a muliplayer LAN game, but on the other computer, when I go to Join a LAN game, the match doesn't show up. All I get is a blank list. I was wondering if this was a problem with the GOG version, or is there something wrong with my setup. I googled the problem, and someone mentioned they had a problem with IPv6, so I disabled that, but it still didn't work.

I also tried setting up a GameRanger account, but got the invalid CD key mentioned in another post, so that options out.

Has anyone been able to successfully start a LAN game?

Thanks!

phyler: How exactly did you do this? I've never linked computers together with a cable. Did you just plug the cable directly into each computer or did you connect them both to the router? Did you need any special cable - I read about these cables called cross-over cables - or just a standard Cat5 Cable? Were there any settings you had to adjust or did it work automatically?

Thanks!

astrugar710: Yes, I plugged the computers into each other with just a regular Cat5 cable. No router or cross-over cable. You can make the game work with the router but you will have to open ports on in for the computers to see each other. I personally did not mess with that since the direct computer link worked fine.

darthcircuit: It should work fine through the router. Opening ports is only necessary when playing online. In fact, the router method would probably be easier as most routers have dhcp enabled by default, so you wouldn't have to assign IP addresses to either of your computers.

tntfoz: I had to enable the microphone in the Windows Control Panel audio settings and then actually plug something into the microphone socket. I didn't actually use a microphone, I've got loads of the 3.5mm to 5.25mm headphone converter jacks at home, one of them is even a doubler, and just plugged one of these into the microphone socket on each of my 3 PCs.

Note that all the PCs needed this - or the server/host PC would crash.

At a guess I think BF2 is trying to setup voice comms between the client and server and without the microphone socket in use it must send garbage through to the server/host which crashes it.

Gydion: Thought they fixed this or is it a related one when playing a LAN game?

tntfoz: I think it's a related one when trying a LAN game.

There was a mic bug that just crashed you out of the game when trying to play by yourself, so perhaps they fixed that one (I never had problems playing solo for example).

But when you try a LAN game the server/host will always crash if it or any of the clients don't have mics plugged in - in my experience at least.

korell: In that case it would be worth raising this with GOG Support as it might just be a case of applying their mic fix to the server checking of the clients. Certainly the solo game doesn't crash for the mic problem any more, which is why I chose to buy it here on GOG as I don't have a home network to set up a LAN and I don't know if I'd be getting it up and running online via something like GameRanger.

tntfoz: Right I actually managed to get this working!

After reading online all sorts of solutions to the crash problems with this game, one fix sorted it for me.

I had to enable the microphone in the Windows Control Panel audio settings and then actually plug something into the microphone socket. I didn't actually use a microphone, I've got loads of the 3.5mm to 5.25mm headphone converter jacks at home, one of them is even a doubler, and just plugged one of these into the microphone socket on each of my 3 PCs.

Note that all the PCs needed this - or the server/host PC would crash.

At a guess I think BF2 is trying to setup voice comms between the client and server and without the microphone socket in use it must send garbage through to the server/host which crashes it.

So I'm happily running a host & client on a Win7 64-bit PC, and two further clients: another Win7 64-bit machine and also an aging WinXP 32-bit machine.

And the game is working just fine!

Hope others have the same luck!