Networks My computer is antisocial

My computer dosent play well with others, I notice this mainly at lan parties. It wont see a lan game unless the ip is typed in manually. Also it dosent see other computers through the my network places/view workgroup computers. I tried updating drivers among other things. Any suggestions would help.
XP Home
ASUS K8v se Deluxe
Marvell Gigabit Lan - in 100mbps mode

 

Ive had simialr things in the past. If i host a game someone can see it but they catn see me in the lobby, but i can see them in the lobby and i can see their games (or various combinations of this) Ive never been able to sort it, and this is over changed in hardware, network hardware DHCP, manual IP setting and evryhting.

 

you guys at uni?

My friend has similar.

He is at uni in sheffield, and when I want to play DoW over host game, I have to host and they join. It won't work vice-versa.

Figured it's the firewall.

 

I've had a simular problem - also think that my main comp might have A.D.D. But anywaysssss, it turned out to be a digital tv card. Check if you have anything which is 'pretending' to be a NIC.

Far Cry tried to go down the digi pipe - disable it - went down the LAN pipe

 

as far as the network share browsing thing not working that would be because windows (domains excluded) use netbios and really suck at resolving the names. Which is why typing in the IP works better. as far as fixing the problem the only thing i can offer is this.

1. Run XP Pro
2. MAke sure all updates are installed
3. if it is still acting up try installing a different NIC
4. (only in extreme cases of geekyness) Build a Domain Server