same thing happens to me. I have windows XP on this comp and Win98 SE on the other one
I successfully connect to the other comp but both me and my friend have a swat skin and after a minute I get DC/ed, connection timed out (wtf)
No firewalls, no AV...
On the future chat client, add a button named "lauch game" that becomes available once you are connected to a server so you don't have to Startup\Programs\VC.
I am a lazy bastard