something strange just happend...need help

So I've been using multibox for a while here and there. I had a problem a while back, where for some reason moving the mouse to another screen caused the server box to start chopping with the mouse/keyboard input. Shortly following that, every client disconnects. After about 10 more seconds, it starts being choppy again, and every client reconnects then disconnects. They eventually get reconnected, but the whole process can repeat randomly while playing. I thought I found what the problem was when this happened, and have been playing fine ever since...until just the other day.

It has started happening again, and I am unable to remember or figure out what the problem is again. I skimmed over the multibox software thread to no avail. One person described similar, but said it was due to hamachi. I also have hamachi on my main box, but the adapter is disabled, and lower in the connections list then my regualar NIC.

If anyone can help I would appreciate it, its driving me bongers that when the main toon goes down and this happens, that I'm dead in the water :( . It figures it started happening on AV weekend, lol.

-S

Ok, I fixed it. I had this long ellaborate post typed out but hit the back button on my mouse and lost everything, so I'll keep it short and sweet.

My main box started showing up as <Comp>.xx.rr.com rather than just <Comp>. So based off of that I started trying multiple things. It ended up working once I put host file entries on my main box for each of the client comps. I consider myself a computer savy person. I run web servers, source control servers, gaming servers, the works... yet I can't fathom what changed (because I haven't changed anything) on my network that would cause them to show up different like that, let alone warrant such a hackish fix to the problem.

Anyone shed some light on this? I would rather fix it the proper way and remove host file entries if I can.

-S