Home LAN cannot see computers for multiplayer gaming - but can ping

[pretzelz]

Season's greetings all,

I have a Windows 8 laptop and a Windows 10 laptop.
Both are on the home WiFi.
Both Windows firewalls switched off.
Both can ping each other and are on same subnet and gateway.

However, in the two specific games I want to play, the hosted gaming session does not show up on the other machine (and vice versa), when trying to search LAN sessions. (I've had success with these games some years back on the office LAN)

I'm wondering if this is some compatibility issue between the two Operating Systems? Or if anyone knows of some windows utility that can bridge a new connection between both machines to help them be seen to each other when one hosts a LAN session?

The two games in question, both quite old, are:

- FlatOut2
- TrackMania Nations Forever

Probably irrelevant - but I did have to install some older directx (2006) directplay dependencies on the Windows 10 laptop, otherwise the games wouldn't start. Both games play perfectly.

FlatOut2 is the main game I'd like to play. It also ties in with gamespy if not LAN, but I expect the configuration is obsolete for that now, it certainly wasn't successful when I tried to host / connect a session.

Any thoughts, much appreciated.

 

[Astra99]

Are these very old DOS-based games? If so, they may use NETBEUI or IPX/SPX rather than TCP/IP, which is now the most common network protocol. Another possibility is that access to the machines is being blocked. Try adding an additional (identical) user to both machines, and give that user admin rights. Log onto both machines as the (new) user and try again.