Aces High Bulletin Board

Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: Old Sport on October 05, 2007, 09:42:43 AM

Title: Clicking "Lobby" causes system freeze
Post by: Old Sport on October 05, 2007, 09:42:43 AM

I don't know what the deal is, but I've clicked "Lobby" a few times on the clipboard, and every time my system freezes, and I have to reboot.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Best Regards

Title: Clicking "Lobby" causes system freeze
Post by: Skuzzy on October 05, 2007, 01:33:19 PM

SOunds like something is blocking the game's ability to connect to the Internet.

Title: Clicking "Lobby" causes system freeze
Post by: Old Sport on October 07, 2007, 12:15:34 AM

Yeah. I tried to connect to the Lobby after disabling my firewall and it works fine.

Several years ago, before I had AV or a FW, a message suddenly appeared in the middle of my screen that said, "You have been hacked!" From then on in my internet paranoia (and since I was working for a telcom company at the time that dealt with problems like that) I do not feel too safe without a FW, even with a performance hit.

My FW is set to allow the AH ports that I was last aware of, 6000 I think.

Is there any setting for the firewall to allow the Lobby to connect?

Thanks

Title: Clicking "Lobby" causes system freeze
Post by: Skuzzy on October 07, 2007, 06:01:22 AM

Aces High II uses a random subset of ports in the range of 2000-6000 for both UDP and TCP.

You never have to worry about being hacked as long as there is no LISTENERS running on a computers port.  A LISTENER is a piece of software designed to react to software trying to connect to your computer fomr the network/Internet.

In the Start->Run->command box, type 'netstat -an' and it will show all the LISTERNERS running on your computer and the ports they are listening on.  Those are the ports you have to be concerned with.

Title: Clicking "Lobby" causes system freeze
Post by: Old Sport on October 07, 2007, 01:50:52 PM

Okay, when the PC is set for AH I ran netstat and I have these three ports "listening"

--------Local-------------Foreign------Status
TCP---0.0.0.0:135--------0.0.0.0:0----Listening
TCP---0.0.0.0:445--------0.0.0.0:0----Listening
TCP--192.168.1.2:139----0.0.0.0:0----Listening

I gather that 445 and 139 are CIFS

And 135 is DCOM

My guess is these are required? Or should they be shut down?

Also, does the Foreign Address 0.0.0.0:0 mean my PC and not external to it?

Thanks again.

Title: Clicking "Lobby" causes system freeze
Post by: Skuzzy on October 07, 2007, 06:42:20 PM

Those ports should never be exposed to the Internet.  135 and 139 are NetBIOS.  Primarily used by file and printer shairing.  445 is one of MS's magic ports.  Always good to shut it down.

Title: Clicking "Lobby" causes system freeze
Post by: Old Sport on October 08, 2007, 02:07:56 AM

Okay, snooped around the net for info and managed to get those last three ports disabled without fubaring my PC, lol.

I'm also now down to 16 processes on XP home.

So all is good.

Thanks again.