OK, rundown is I'm on Vista and my buddy's on XP, and the internet computer is on XP too - we're both connecting to my router wirelessly. When he starts a local server, I can see it and join it just fine, but when I start one, he can't see shit. And the odd thing is this worked right the very first time but now it's a no go, and nothing was changed.
Tried both protocol 47 and 48 (like I know WTF that is) and it didn't make a difference.
His firewall was completely off (yeah I know, smart), so I figured it was an issue with my computer not taking incoming connections, and tried disabling my firewall. Nothing. Tried dedicating IP's to our computers, which worked fine for him... but Vista, the unruly child it is, refused to sit down in its assigned seat and refused to connect to the damn internet, or even get a different local IP assigned... WTF? It's like my machine had a seat with its name on it but it was afraid to even sit down on its ass, probably because it's too busy storing its friggin' thumb in there.
Tried forwarding ports, but since my computer refused to even get a network address, much less take the one assigned to it, it obviously didn't do shit, and I'm not sure I even did it right. I opened 27015 for me, the server, and 27005 for him, the client, but fuck, that only matters for internet connections anyway. I was trying anything. Then since the dedicated IP didn't work for me and hindered my connection, I deleted both IP dedications and the port forwarding. Then finally I tried reenabling UPnP just to see if it might do something... guess what, nothing.
Anyone that's tried to get a Merde Vista computer to talk to an XP computer correctly knows it's a fucking worthless pain in the ass. Could this be a related issue? Or am I just
