Now I\'m even more suspicious that it\'s a hardware issue.  I was hoping someone more enlightened in these matters could throw a yea or nay behind it.

I used Ethereal to inspect the packets that were hitting my ethernet card (while attempting to connect with the laanx server).  There definitely seems to be packets going back and forth between laanx and port 7354 on my machine, but they occur almost regardless of my router settings.

They occur whether port forwarding is active or not.
They occur if I deliberately map 7354 to the wrong port (they still end up at 7354).
They occur if I deliberately forward 7354 to the wrong LAN IP.
They occur if I deliberately put another LAN IP in the DMZ (with no forwards active).

As I understood most of these measures should have stopped the packets reaching my machine.  Either I\'ve got the concepts wrong, or perhaps there is a fault.  And if there is a fault with my equipment, then that\'s one less thing for the devs to worry about (and one more thing to consider when trouble shooting)...

Cheers.

Originally posted by leestrong7
I am sure bittorrent supports this

It certainly seems to pick up where it left off.  Makes sense that it can resume part way through if it can swap arbitrary chunks of data with other users.

I meant to say a later version

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Even though it was kinda expected, the newer download (and consequent update) still waits at the character selection screen.  At least the updates have gone from 70MB for the old version to 2.5MB for the new one, and I\'m fairly content it\'s not an updater issue (I\'m sure there\'s more than a couple of people here who wondered why I ever doubted it).

But since both installations failed the same way, that also suggests that it\'s an issue specific to the machines that have this problem (probably also obvious to some).  The main possibilities that come to mind are already having Crystal Space and being stuck with the DirectX debug runtime, but I wouldn\'t have expected these to make a difference.  But this is heading somewhere that may be better in another thread...

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OK now I\'m getting somewhere...

I managed to hijack my wife\'s laptop to test PS on.  At first it behaved just the same, but then worked fine when I got it on a regular dial up connection.  This points a big finger at the modem/router which doesn\'t appear to be doing as it\'s told (or at an operator who doesn\'t *really* know what he\'s doing )

It\'s an Netcomm NB5 ADSL modem.  I\'ve tried (to name only a few):
- port forwarding of UDP on 13331 (but I understand that is not needed for the Laanx server).
- port forwarding of UDP on 7354 (the NB5 doesn\'t appear to have a distinction between inward an outward).
- putting my computer in the DMZ (with no other port forwards selected).  Also by disabling the Windows firewall at the same time to make sure (although I didn\'t need to on the laptop).

Regardless, there seems to be something essential it\'s not letting through to begin the \"Character Select\" process.  Any suggestions would be warmly appreciated.  Appologies also if I seem to be rehashing an old question (I have spent a fair bit of time scouring the forums and wouldn\'t mind some solid clarification ).

Cheers all.

Edit by Moogie: Posts merged into one. Nothing to do with being sensitive- it\'s just the rules.

Edit: Thanks indeedie.  Conform I shall (breaking rules is the lesser challenge).  Appologies to Burntleaf!  

Thanks indeedie, but the update has been run and then some.  The login screen reports version 0.3.009, which I understood to be the latest.  But then again there might be something in that - somewhere the updater perhaps missed something crucial, also leading to the missing files reported through th3unreal\'s console.

I could also be completely wrong