This is intended as a sort-of follow-up to MrV's post from February 04, 2003 on "WinXP and Warcraft 2 IPX/SPX issues". For your convenience, here is the body of his message: Okay. If you don't like wind, skip to the bottom. NetBEUI and IPX/SPX are older IBM/Novell NetWare protocols, but are still supported by most software operating systems; to include, MicroSoft. However "progressive" O/Ses choose to default to TCP/IP. Owing to its IBM roots, MicroSoft continues to support NetBEUI and IPX/SPX, but lumps both protocols under a single driver called "NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBios Compatible Transport Protocols". Funny thing is, under the advanced settings in TCP/IP, the WINS tab has a radio button for NetBIOS settings. For which MicroSoft has been so kind as to add a rider driver to the TCP/IP protocol simply called NWLink NetBIOS. See a conflict here? The following actions worked for me: 1. Open Local Area Connection properties. 2. Ensure NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS Compatible Transport Protocol is checked. 3. Uncheck NWLink NetBIOS. 4. Click [OK] 5. Kick some Human fanny. ************** Here is my plea: Ok. I read every forum thread on the internet I could find about Warcraft 2's problems with IPX networking on Windows XP, but didn't find a solution. Your advice, MR V, got me closest yet, I believe. I really had my hopes up when I installed the NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS Compatible Transport Protocol. I tried every imaginable combination under the network bridge properties dialog box. The single player campaign is fine, which is why I think it's not the usual 'Windows XP won't work for me'-problem. It just keeps on saying outright, when I try to connect: "Can't locate IPX network". Please, let me know what you make of this, anyone out there. Help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

Use the TCP/IP network connection instead of IPX/SPX...it should work. Just make sure you have the TCP/IP protocol installed and configured properly first. IPX/SPX is a Novell protocol and it doesn't work as well as TCP/IP on a Windows platform.

I wish that would work. I have Warcraft 2 v1.5. I think it's as pure DOS as it gets, and many people have problems even running it under Win XP. I can run it, alright, but it's looking explicitly for an IPX network. From what I can tell, there is no choice of TCP/IP this game will allow me. Now, on my Win 98 PC, before I installed the IPX protocol, it was saying the same thing. Once I installed IPX protocol, it wasn't complaining, any longer. There was no need to configure it. I just had to re-boot and it was ready to connect. On the other PC, nothing's changed, though I switched through some possible combinations of protocols on my network bridge. Fundamentally, I left the automatically configured settings on the protocols alone, because that is how they work under Win 98. Win XP seems to be in need of "special attention". After all, the problem still looms large. Anyone care to take up the fight?