Have you and your friend made sure GameRanger has full access to the internet in the firewalls? Also note that antispyware programs running in the background are reported to sometimes silently blocking GameRanger.

Regarding the serial key then I have read about some supermarket chains like Walmart (or who ever it was) selling games at a low price where all copies used the same serial key. As you hint at then if the serial key is checked as part of starting a multiplayer game this will usually hinder people in starting a MP session if that key is already registered. Unfortunately I do not know if the serial key is checked when playing RoL MP and a quick search on google gave no result.

Maybe there is a reader out there who can enlighten us?

Okay thanks

Right we finally found my friends other serial key so now we have two games with two different serial keys and the game still stops playing whilst going through gameranger.

We did manually patch it using the download link that we found on this forum, i wonder if that is perhaps the problem with the game. Does anyone know?

Thanks again in advance.

My experience with the game is that its network part is not working optimal. Installing the patches manually is no different than doing it automatically except you are sure you get the game patched. As far as I remember, patch RETAIL-0612.1201.0000-0.0704.1001.0000.RTP makes the game compatible with Vista so it is not needed unless one of you use Vista. Above mentioned patch is the one called Patch 2.5 in below link:

RoL Patch Notes
(Please note that BigHugeGames are defunct)

I have checked the patch information and both of our computers have it. Mine is a laptop running Vista and my friend is running XP.

We are playing over the internet from the same IP... would that have any bearing on any problems perhaps? We have tried lan before without GameRanger and it's not made a difference.

That should not make any difference as each computer has its own IP. Have you tried using Hamachi and seing if that works?

Right we have tried:

Hamachi - No luck

Hamachi with no firewalls, we uninstalled our firewalls and disabled windows firewall properly - No luck

GameRanger with no firewalls - No luck still

It's just how does it work for others but not for us?

Only thing I can think at is if specific ports are closed by your ISP but this is rare now-a-days. I know that people in Italy using a specific ISP have problems playing online with some games. This is caused by some software the ISP need their costumers to have installed on their computer.