Mac and Windows LAN capable?

I got a game that's on my Mac and also my PC. Was wondering about LAN gaming with the two. Now I'm not a network expert, but my guess is that I have to fetch one of my ethernet cables, plug one end into the Mac, and the other end into the PC - and it's good to go?

I've tried a different method before, by connecting my Mac's ethernet cable to my wireless router, with the PC doing the same thing. Couldn't find any LAN servers in the game though.

Anyone care to share some of their awesome LAN-knowledge?

That router method should work. Did you make sure to host a game on one of the machines and have the other connect to it?

Of course. I hosted it and optimised it for LAN gaming, the server shows up on the host's server list, but on the PC's list, there's nothing, even after 5-10 refreshes.

(I should mention that the PC currently has some sort of virus that won't let me access the control panel, or the internet, but I figure the internet doesn't have a part in this?)

Burim said:

(I should mention that the PC currently has some sort of virus that won't let me access the control panel, or the internet, but I figure the internet doesn't have a part in this?)

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Err, yeah, it will. The first thing you want to do is get the PC fixed.

Being the professionally paranoid geek that I am, I'm going to seriously suggest you get the PC working properly first. There are some great tools out there to help you clean the crap out of XP, and here are some recommendations:

F-secure's Blacklight - you can get the current beta from www.betanews.com
Webroot's Spysweeper - also at betanews, or at www.webroot.com - this is hands-down the best spyware/AV combination out there, unless you have a 64-bit machine (they're working on it).

Also, when I googled "can't open control panel <winversion>" I found numerous good tips on how to resolve the issue. It will take time, but you have been denied access to the guts of your machine. I would strongly recommend resolving that.

Also, you may have some DNS issues happening. In XP, go to CWindows\system32\drivers\etc and open the hosts file with notepad. There should only be a reference to 127.0.0.1 and a few comments. If there are more IP addresses listed, you may have a bigger problem than you realize.

Good luck

Okay, I'm currently downloading Blacklight so I'll just mention a few other things.

Ever since the virus started, I've literally cleared out my files on the hard drive (backed them onto a disk) so I have no problem with wiping out anything that still exists there. So if you got any other strong software to recommend, shoot.

Also, I've tried inserting my XP Setup CD to start over. A lot of the time, the installation goes to about 50%, then that blue screen with the horrible error comes up and I'm back to nothing. It seems like the virus detects the setup and just won't allow it to run.

I don't have access to Control Panel whatsoever - not even in Safe Mode! I've tried booting up from the admins account, but still no access to the CP.

The virus does show itself though. Besides waiting a full 15 minutes to start up the computer, when I eventually do get to the desktop, a pop-up message appears, saying something like "Virus detected. Warning! You need to download anti-spyware software quick. Click here to download!"

That pop-up message won't close, it just stays on the desktop all the time.

Going back to the LAN issue, are you saying that if/when I get the internet working on my PC, LAN gaming between the PC and Mac (using the method from before) would probably work?

When installing Windows, try destroying and recreating the partition, then do the slow format. If that doesn't work, then find out what sort of drive you have, go to the manufacturer's website, get the bootable disc and use the tool that zeros out your hard drive a couple times. Then go ahead and try to reinstall Windows.

Kash said:

When installing Windows, try destroying and recreating the partition, then do the slow format. If that doesn't work, then find out what sort of drive you have, go to the manufacturer's website, get the bootable disc and use the tool that zeros out your hard drive a couple times. Then go ahead and try to reinstall Windows.

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Thank you for that.

I'd go right ahead and check out my hardware information but now I can't even boot properly. I'm getting some message at startup which goes something by the lines of: "Incorrect boot drive. Try booting from another drive. Press any key to continue."

Pressing keys just makes it come up again. This happened before but it went away after a night's sleep. If anyone has any info on this, please let me know.

For now, I'm gonna dig into the computer (literally) and check out the label on my hard drive.

EDIT

So I opened up my PC and took this photo of the hard drive. Went over to the manufacturer's site, found the product but no solutions to my problem. No downloads or updates for it. Here's the link to it.

Sounds as is your hard drive might be failing. If Windows setup fails partway through then it's unlikely to be the virus, as the initial install boots from the CD and subsequent boots are from the fresh XP install, assuming you're doing a complete reinstall and not an upgrade.

Burim said:

Going back to the LAN issue, are you saying that if/when I get the internet working on my PC, LAN gaming between the PC and Mac (using the method from before) would probably work?

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I'm saying that it will be a lot easier to set up ;-)
At that point you need to make sure that you've selected sharing on the folder you need to share, and I would use a hub or switch instead of just trying to connect them together with an Ethernet cable. Unless either the PC or Mac has an auto-sensing NIC, you would need a cross-over cable to do it without a switch or hub.

SeaTools for DOS is what you need