Just moved, cannot log in - tried everything I can think of

[Misterlich]

I've just moved two days ago, to a different state, about 550 miles away. Now I can't connect to the server.

I've tried:

• Restarting NwN
  
• Restarting laptop
  
• Trying direct connect instead of the custom launcher for the server
  
• Tried using both the web address and numeric IP address
  
• Tried using my phone's hotspot, instead of my new apartment's router, and I've connected via my phone before - so I don't know why that didn't fix it
  
• Tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game, and all associated haks/overrides
  

My buddy/roommate also can log into the server on his desktop so it isn't our network.
I have no idea WTF is going on. Can anybody help me? I've got my friend (the one I moved in with) interested in playing, too, but he won't play without me.

[zDark Shadowz]

When you go through the process of attempting to log in via direct connect through NWN Multiplayer to nwn.efupw.com:5121 ...

*At what point does it prevent you from logging in?

*Are there any specific messages you are receiving?

*Does EFU show up as active in your History list?
    -If so, what is the ping?

*Are there any reserved ports on the router that might be conflicting with your firewall settings for allowing Nwn TCP etc connections?

I don't know anything about that last one tbh but describing everything in detail helps so someone else can provide you with a solution, or get someone you trust to TeamViewer or something to your desktop and physically see what's going on.

[Golgo13]

A few blind suggestions:

-Try to add NWN and/or the 5121 port to your firewall's list of exceptions if it's not already included
-Attempt to log in through a VPN (unlikely to be the issue, but you never know)
-Use the "netstat" command to check whether the 5121 port has already been reserved by another application

As the above post said, with as little feedback from your side it's a bit hard to give more accurate suggestions. Help people help you, post as much of what you can find of your connection issues here.

[Misterlich]

Firewall's not causing the issues; used netstat, nothing was wrong; I also just tried using "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew" and nothing.


Dark Shadowz:

- It stops me when I hit "connect", and then says "could not translate address"
- EFU does not show up in my history list because this is a fresh install, and it doesn't add it to my history unless it successfully connects to the server.
- I've tried altering the port I connect with in nwnplayer.ini and nothing worked. I also tried connecting not through my wifi at the apartment, but through my phone's hotspot, and it didn't work. My buddy installed fresh on his desktop and connected immediately to EFU, so it's definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY not my router.

Caster on the IRC says he's had this problem before and it resolves itself. Maybe I should just wait a few days.

[Golgo13]

I remember having this issue when I had a virtual machine running on my PC. Shutting it down and rebooting worked then. Did you install anything which might involve virtualization and networking? Or for that matter, any other recent addition to your system.

[LaceAndLeather]

I am technically useless, but I hope this gets resolved for you soon!

[zDark Shadowz]

Could not translate address normally means the address has been typed incorrectly, as far as I can recreate that message it involved deviating the ".com:"  portion of the direct connect address, make sure that part is correct, that you haven't used a comma or a ; instead.

*Even if .com: is the only thing entered it will try to connect and gives a different message, anything before and after that can be garbled nonsense, only if that part is entered incorrectly does it become unable to translate the address. (That's all I found on my end anyway...)

Another thing we can try if it definitely is 100% entered correctly - if your friend can connect to EFU, open up the nwnplayer.INI file in his NWN/Never winter Nights folder and look down to his history section and see what IP its showing to connect through your router, then copy and paste that portion, or manually enter character for character, into your own nwnplayer.ini file under History or Favourites and see how that goes in showing connectivity.

[Misterlich]

The IP address was typed correctly.

Yes, I have tried turning it off and back on again rofl.

[zDark Shadowz]

Ah well, guess I can't be much help at all. Last thing I know of but doubt is the issue, is that players using the same internet connection need to have different client ports set in their nwnplayer.ini file.

[goate]

I believe I had that problem once when I was still using Windows, and it just simply went away after a few days.  I never did figure it out.

The only remaining thing I can think of is "ipconfig /flushdns", which flushes your DNS cache.

-gracken

[Golgo13]

Yes, I have tried turning it off and back on again rofl.

The point I was trying to get across was if you had something interfering with your DNS access in your system. But yes, turning it off and back again is the prime system conflict resolver. ;)

This will be a bit of a crapshoot, but you could try to switch to a public DNS server and see how it goes.

[IxTheSpeedy]

When you say that you have a fresh install of NWN, did you buy a new copy from GOG?  or is it the same CD?  Could be that you haven't entered your purchased CD Keys yet if it's a brand new copy.
 

[zDark Shadowz]

Looks like he hasn't updated this yet but misterlich was online yesterday, confirmed with him the issue has been resolved (no explanations though) so he's good for now.

[goate]

This issue is a real conundrum.  I helped Misterlich and LeatherAndLace troubleshoot this for hours, and here are some of the things we tried:

• Flushing the DNS cache (ipconfig /flushdns) - still got "could not translate address"
• Using IP address in the Direct Connect connection string (104.130.1.251:5121) - still got "could not translate address"
• Bouncing the connection off of a server I rent, and using that server's IP in the connection string (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:5121) - still got "could not translate address
• Editing the C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts to map 104.130.1.251 to fake.efupw.com, then using that as a connection string (fake.efupw.com) - still got "could not translate address"
• Editing the C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts to map 104.130.1.251 to the Cormyr PW's hostname of frc.ddns.net (LeatherAndLace was able at the time to connect to Cormyr, but not EFU) to try to trick NWN into going to EFU instead of Cormyr, then connecting to Cormyr.  This connected LeatherAndLace to Cormyr.  Either we got the Cormyr hostname wrong, or NWN does some persistent DNS caching
• Using "localhost:5121" as a connection string - still got "could not translate address"
• Changing the direct connect string in nwnplayer.ini - still got "could not translate address"
• Disabling the Windows firewall - still got "could not translate address"

In all instances I listened on the server side and saw no incoming packets.

What finally worked for LeatherAndLace was a reboot, but I'm not really certain that was what actually fixed it.  LeatherAndLace stated that he/she had done a reboot previously.  There are hits for this all over Google, and we've tried most of the solutions.  Because this problem is transient, most people think their fix worked, when in reality the problem probably just went away.

Next time this happens, we should try using the NWN client extender.

Likely this is caused by NWN doing it's own DNS/IP address caching, and somehow getting into a bad state.

One interesting note: LeatherAndLace has an IPv6 address.  That may be somehow involved in getting NWN's caching into a bad state.