On your client your eqhost.txt should be -
"192.168.0.1:5999"

On your server your db.ini should also be that ip -
host=192.168.0.1

Your boot5zones -
what rubyrhinosaur said in the last post

loginserver.ini also -
loginserver=192.168.0.1
loginport=5999


I could guess that if you are using ICS that you have 2 NICs in your server. Is it possible that when you use 127.0.0.1 or localhost that the zones are binding to your other NIC instead of your internal? Don't know but thinking out loud.


More clarification, you said you
but specifically, make sure you do a THOROUGH scan in the EQ patcher... just wanted to be clear on that one.

changed the ip to the one in the previous post (which i have used before) and it disconnected me again.

but....

out of interest, i closed all the zone windows, which repopped up again, then clicked on Enter World, and this time it let me in....?

good to see it working, a bit buggy but fun to mess with all the same.

thanks for help, appreciated

That is strange. The world server restarts the zones when they die, that much I've learned. I wonder, are you starting things in this order-

minilogin
world - wait for it to completely init
boot5zones - once they completely start, look at world and make sure they attached

I'm curious if the first time you run it from scratch if you only see 4 lines in each zone window. There should be a lot more, but if you don't have a db entry that authorizes the zone to connect to world, you'll see only four. Might be a bug that lets it through on a restart maybe? Realllllllly guessing now =b I should stop that hah.

I can't even be close with that blatant guess up above. How could the world server know to restart the zone if the zone never connected to it in the first place.

Actually I tested how that works if the zones don't connect on both a fast computer and a slow computer. The fast computer says zone unavailable and if I try to get in with that character anyways it instantly gave me the zone unavailable box again. On the slow computer, when I tried to enter even though zone was unavailable it popped up the everquest background and started to act like it was loading. However, half way across the bar, it threw me back out with a zone unavailable again. Weird =0 Still haven't learned anymore that will help you, unless the previous did somewhat.

that must be it, i have tended to start the boot5zones file right after the world one. so maybe closing the windows was allowing them to inititalise properly.

now for some exploring in norath :D

Maybe, but I messed around more and found that you can kill both the minilogin and world servers, restart them, and the zones reconnects eventually. Some times it was instant, sometimes a minute or so, so I would guess there is a retry based on a timer in there. In any case, glad you made it, have fun explorin ~