SE4 Gold bug

[Phoenix-D]

My laptop -300mhz Celeron with 96 MB of RAM- has a USB ethernet card, IPX, TCP/IP, and file/print sharing installed.

It runs standard SE4 fine, but it won't run Gold UNLESS it has been plugged into the network at least once during this session.

In other words:
-reboot. No network. Crash. "Cannot activte Windows sockets"
-reboot- Network. SE4 gold will start as long as the machine isn't rebooted again- it can be unplugged from the network.
-reboot. No network. Plug in network. SE4G works, as above.

As you can imagine, this is a bit annoying Anyone have an idea on how to fix it? I've tried removing TCP/IP so far. No effect. There's nothing special runing, no antivirus, no firewall. Just drivers.

Phoenix-D

[ 09 March 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Resident Alien 2]

quote:

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Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
My laptop -300mhz Celeron with 96 MB of RAM- has a USB ethernet card, IPX, TCP/IP, and file/print sharing installed.

It runs standard SE4 fine, but it won't run Gold UNLESS it has been plugged into the network at least once during this session.

In other words:
-reboot. No network. Crash. "Cannot activte Windows sockets"
-reboot- Network. SE4 gold will start as long as the machine isn't rebooted again- it can be unplugged from the network.
-reboot. No network. Plug in network. SE4G works, as above.

As you can imagine, this is a bit annoying Anyone have an idea on how to fix it? I've tried removing TCP/IP so far. No effect. There's nothing special runing, no antivirus, no firewall. Just drivers.

Phoenix-D

[ 09 March 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

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This may or may not help.

First some info. I have Norton Internet Security installed on my PC (XP Home) and when I start SE4 Gold it says "....SE4.exe is preparing to access the internet". However it doesn't try to connect to anything, I am not prompted to create a firewall rule and I just ran a packet sniffer and no packets generated. Looks like maybe SE4 is just checking the network configuration on startup.

I have a business application that when it's setup on a laptop connected to a network it only works while laptop is connected to the network. If setup off network it only works when not on network. And there were also problems depending on which network card used (docking station or PCIA (?) card)

The way we fixed the problem was to add a "MS Loopback Adapter" (this is with NT4 by the way, works with Win 2000, haven't tried it with XP).

With this added the laptop could run the application on the network and also off the network, with network card or on a docking station.

Here's what I remember if you want to try it.
1. Add a MS Loopback Adapter, this should be first [1] in the list of Network Adapters.
2. IP Address for the MS Loopback Adapter is set to something like 192.168.1.199, any 192.168.*.* or other internal only IP would be ok.
3. For each "Binding" the one for MS Loopback Adapter needs to be first in the list. Use move button.
4. For all "Protocols" the MS Loopback Adapter needs to be first in the list. Use move button.

Reboot and check by pinging your machine name - you should get the IP 192.168.1.199 (or whatever).

[Phoenix-D]

Thanks for the help, but I'm running 98 No loopback adapter. Found a site that said the VPN adapter would do the same thing, I'll try that.

Phoenix-D

[Phoenix-D]

Well, that didn't work. Time to contact shrapnel support. Even removing all my network drivers didn't help.

EDIT: hmm. Apparently SE4:G doesn't like removeable network cards. Leaving the card plugged in- even if unconnected- works. Odd.

Phoenix-D

[ 09 March 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]