I am having the same problem and no luck solving it. Please let me
know if you find a solution first.

Drew


mark wrote:
> I purchased two copies of DS II, and am trying to initiate LAN play between
> the two machines (separated by a 3-Com 10/100 switch). Everything works up to
> the point of actually launching the server to host the game (staging area,
> game setup, single-player, etc.) at which point the guest machine shows the
> server starting (but stays in the staging area) and the server switches to a
> black screen with only the mouse pointer working. Seems to be consistent and
> re-installation did not affect it. This happens regardless of which machine
> hosts (the host machine is the one that locks up on the black screen of
> doom). The machine is not frozen, you can alt-tab out and kill DS II.
>
> Windows Firewall is disabled and oddly, Each machine can join/play an
> internet (already hosted) games just fine. Not really interested in that
> aspect, we bought it really for LAN play. The machines are both Windows XP
> SP2, DirectX 9.0c, 1 GB ram. I have applied the 2.1 patch (hoping against
> hope) but this didn;t really change the symptoms any,