Cannot Start Game - Loking for Server

[jgdesigner]

Cannot start a single player game. A dialog comes up saying that the program has timed out attempting to connect to server. Why is it doing that?

[Vezzra]

Please report your platform/OS and the version of FreeOrion you use. If you're on Windows, FO might be blocked by the Windows firewall. Even when playing a single player game, FO starts a dedicated server process to which the client then tries to connect.

[Dilvish]

Oops, I was too slow typing and Vezzra beat me, but I have a small bit of extra info here, so...

It would help if you gave more information about what platform you're running and whether or not you've ever successfully run FO before.

Please note that the client and server communicate via the TCP/IP protocol. In a single player game they are both on your computer and use a localhost address that most firewall software ignores. But some common Windows Firewall software blocks them until you specifically unblock them. So, if you're on Windows, check if your Firewall is asking for permission to let FreeOrion communicate, or just look into adding it to some list of permissions there.

[jgdesigner]

Thanks for your help. I'm running on Windows XP. I've never had this issue with earlier versions (I'm using 0.4.4 now). I've even disabled Windows firewall and all anti-virus programs to see if that was the problem but the issue continues.

[Dilvish]

hmm, well please post your freeorion.log and freeoriond.log files from the config directory; perhaps they will have some clues.

[Geoff the Medio]

Have you tried rebooting?

[Vezzra]

Sounds like a crashed server process in the background... if you haven't tried rebooting like Geoff suggests, that's definitel the next thing you should do, and if that doesn't work, we need the logs Dilvish mentioned.

[jgdesigner]

Thanks! Here are my freeorion.log and freeoriond.log files

[Geoff the Medio]

Did you try rebooting?

Looks like the server process hasn't started for two days prior to the client log you sent. The client tries to start the server, but then can't connect to it.

Can you run cmd.exe and then use cd to go to the directory where freeorion is installed, then run freeoriond.exe ? What happens / is output?

[jgdesigner]

How do I run cmd.exe? What is "cd"? When I launch freeorionD.exe nothing happens. Can't imagine why freeorion can't connect to the server. no firewalls are up.

[MatGB]

cd is a command line thing telling you to change directory, don't worry about it.

You're on XP, so these instructions are from memory, if they don't work google Windows XP Task Manager

Hit and hold in this order CTRL, then ALT, then DEL. When you've pressed DEL with the other two held XP should now give you a screen with a list of options, one of which is "start task manager" or similar. It's Task Manager you want.

When you've got the Task Manager screen, look at the Processes tab, it sorts by name and under F there is almost certainly running part of the Freeorion game. Select that and at the bottom there's an option to end the process (I forget what XP calls it).

That should do it, if you click the shortcut now the game should run.

HOWEVER

XP is a very old, and now insecure, OS, it REALLY doesn't like being run constantly and needs to be rebooted fairly regularly, if you've not rebooted that machine in several days then I strongly recommend you do so for your own benefit, that should also help the game run better as well.