The port probably assumes a 32-bit TCP/IP stack is installed on your computer. You may want to check if you have this.

First, check if you have a "Network Neighborhood" icon on your desktop. If yes, right click and select "properties." If no, go to Control Panel->Network.

Is "TCP/IP" in the list? If not, click Add->Protocol->Microsoft->TCP/IP.

If yes, or once you have it installed, go to the MS-DOS Prompt box and type "ping localhost". If that doesn't work, try "ping 127.0.0.1".

You should get output somewhat like:

Pinging schubert [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128

(With slightly different numbers and "schubert" replaced with the internal name for your computer)

If either of these work, you should have an OK stack. If you get an error message, try removing TCP/IP from Network properties, restarting Windows, and then reinstalling TCP/IP. If it asks you about replacing a new file with an old file, use the old file.

Also, if you have AOL, try upgrading to a newer version (4 or 5 works, I think).

Hope this will be helpful! If this isn't the problem, maybe someone else can offer a suggestion.

Rasputin, I would very much like to know what software you can't find for Linux. OK, I admit that you can't find a lot of ports for newer games for Linux, but there's an easy fix for that: Just keep Windows on your hard drive for gaming.

For any other stuff you might use, take a peek into these sites. On them, you should be able to find an equal or (probably) better Linux apps to replace what ever you might use in Windows:

linux.org application resource links