Hi guys i have been going mad trying to get this sorted. There is a free download of fear combat the online part of the fear game by sierra. I have had it for a few years and used to run my own server on windows xp so me and my mates could have a laugh blowing each other up in private. It's still available for free i'll post about it in free games. Anyway i decided to reinstall it in windows 7 and thats when things went a bit weird. Firstly when it installs you should get 2 icons on your desktop 1 for the game and another for the dedicated server. I now only get the game one. So ok you can launch the game then choose "host" and set up a server and make it dedicated and when its launched the game closes and you get a confirmation box with the info there showing that. Then you minimise this window and the server is running. This seems to be working. There is a port that needs opening which i have done on my router. I even found a post suggesting it used other ports as well which i opened tho i never had to before. Then when you click the game launch icon again you can search for servers and in the past my server would show up and i could join it but now it doesn't. I have given myself full admin rights to everything and set the port manually tcp and udp in windows firewall (thats all i use) even tho the server itself is listed in the rules section. I have tried XP compatability mode but still nothing. I have also uninstalled and re installed it and run the exe's as admin and still the same. I always make sure i have deleted the 2 folders it creates and use ccleaner to check any registry entries left before i re install. I have also redownloaded the game from the official site incase my version had become corrupt. It used to work really easy under XP but now whatever i try fails. I will get my mate to see if he can see it when hes online but i got a feeling he wont see it either. I dont know if theres something stupid i missed here but the server appears to be running from the window information. On a side note i also had some problems with the game stuttering and lagging when i joined other server even tho my rig is more than good enough to play it and i have no problems with other games like left for dead 2 etc. I overcome this in the options by setting every setting to maximum ? Any help would be great. Thanks