I used to play Freelancer in late 2009 with the Win7 x64 Release Candidate without any problems.
Now i use Windows 7 x64 Professional with the same Firewall (Comodo x64 3.13), the same Antivir (Avira) and everything else is approximately the same on my system as before, but Freelancer cannot establish any connection at all, which can be easily observed with this firewall.
It just does not access the network, it opens no connections while looking for servers, as does the FLserver.exe. That means i even cannot connect to my own LAN server. The firewall does not ask for FLserver.exe.
The installation was clean, UAC was/is disabled, the Windows-Firewall is disabled, DirectX 9.0c/9.29 has been installed. The Discovery mod was installed with FLMM 1.31 and the were no errors at all.
IPv6 is unchecked. Tried it with a static IP and with Avira uninstalled.
Every other programm/game runs fine on the internet, Freelancer and the FL server are the only exceptions. Even the Discovery Updater ran fine and installed Update 3.
Perhaps it's got something to do with DirectPlay, Freelancer is the only game i have that uses it.
I wonder, whether any of you have a Freelancer-entry in the registry under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectPlay8\Applications
or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DirectPlay\Applications
.
I solved it myself some time ago. In case anybody encounters a similar problem, here's my solution:
There's no need to re-install windows. All i did was to extract all entries regarding "DirectPlay" from a fresh Win7-Installation on a friends PC with regedit. Then i just copied the files onto my HD and added the entries (.reg files) to my registry. Most of them didn't work, cause many registry-entries were in use and counldn't be changed on the fly.
But the few which were successfully applied to the registry were enough to let servers appear in the server-browser once again:D
So it was indeed a DirectPlay-related damage to the registry, dunno how it happened^
Please run "Netstat -a -b" and post the result here. While you have a server running of course.
Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.
Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.