LAN gaming troubles...

[Draken]

Greetings all!
Just recently my PC has been killing my games when I LAN with friends. It seems to happen every 20 mins or so: We would be gaming (this seems to happen on many games, examples: Halo pc, Unreal tournament GOTY, Unreal tournament 2004, etc) and my game would suddenly minimise to desktop, with all the other PCs in the LAN freezing (even if I'm not hosting). After a minute or so I can maximise the game and this returns everything to normal (however some people have to log out and re-enter the game again, cancelling their scores). Very annoying...
I know its my PC thats doing it! It's like my PC has AIDS... I cant LAN with anybody anymore, or I crash their game!
I run WinXP Pro, and I've tried gaming without my firewall and virus scanner (killed via TaskManager for the test) but it still happens. I haven't changed my setup in a long time, the only thing I upgrade are my virus definitions and software for my AntiVir virus scanner. I sometimes receive error messages when this happens, as I can remember only UT gives me these messages, an example is below:

General protection fault!

History: MessagePump <-MainLoop

Whether this has any relevance or not I dont know... But all I know is this is annoying the *censored* outta me. Any HELP would be much appreciated!

Draken.

[GX1_Man]

Did you try your Google button?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=History%3A+MessagePump+%3C-MainLoop+&btnG=Google+Search\

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[Draken]

Sorry GX1_Man, No help from Google.   :-/

[Draken]

*bump*  Please, it's annoying *censored* outta me. Dont worry so much about the error message, just give me a bunch of possibilities. What could cause my games to crash like that? What would kill the connection momentarily? Anything would help.

[Maveri]

Well in my experience Steam Games used to doi this to me, and it had an error verifying my STEAM ID; however I have a feeling that its not your problem.

Have you checked your IPX config? I installed this for playing older games, like starcraft, put Halo probably runs on UDP. I'd install sp2 and then proceed to install as many network protocols as possible. Also, certain background tasks interfer with ports. Make sure something evil might not be installed [like AOL's PortMagic ] as a spyware, its hard to get rid of and really annoys networks.

When all else fails, repair your connection!! This is only auxillerary advice, but after all this make sure your NIC is running on currnet drivers.

[Draken]

I have all the protocols available installed already. Maybe this is something nasty hiding in the background, but I can't seem to find it. I'm totally aware of spyware and the like, and regularly virus scan and scan for wares. I just get the feeling...I dont know why but...It may be my virus scanner. I updated AntiVir a little while ago and that's when it started. I had AntiVir OFF for the tests though so I dont see any real connection... Any more ideas?

[Mr.Paul]

well if it only started when u installed the anti viruse software you could jsut try a system restore to the closet time before you intalled the software, and if you need new software you can try avast, they have a non-commercial version for free with a one year sunscription as loing as u dont give away your key code your good. i think you can get it here:
 http://avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html  
hope it helps

[GX1_Man]

Have a read here. The most important thing is Safe Mode with System Restor off.

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1149948530

[Draken]

AVG is by far the best virus scanner I have ever seen, and I dont want to even think about parting with it. SO... this presents a problem.