Portforwarding stopped working
OK, when you set up port forwarding, you have to tell the router to forward such and such a port (or range) to such and such a system.
Most people allocate their IP addresses on their home network, by using a DHCP server, and most home routers have one - so that they can make sure that all the systems are on the same network.
But the DHCP server does not try to insure that the same address is given to the same system every time. In fact, people don't worry about that, they use a scheme of telling nameservers which ip address they got this time.
Generally they TRY to assign the same system the same address every time, if it is available, but in some cases you will go to renew and get a different address.
The point is that port forwarding set up today might not work in an hour when the address expires.
Those are opaque messages but I am gonna take a guess. The server starts up, and starts a port. Then it says, "This is a slow (late) network" and it has waited for 38 seconds for a response. Finally it gives up.
He is not on satellite or trying to use a cellphone internet provider, is he? 38 seconds is not completely unusual for those guys. If he is using regular DSL or cable, you are probably right.
So, back to DHCP. There is no guarantee that you will get the same local address whenever you log in to your local network, unless you have configured your router to always associate your system with the same IP. When you first set up port forwarding, it works, and then, wow, it fails because you got a different IP address from the DHCP server in the modem.
Your local IP address will be 192.168.1.something, most likely. These addresses are in a special range that everyone uses for private addresses.
On a vista box, if you go to "Network Connections", then right click on the entry representing your hardware connection (might have one for wired, one for wireless, one for bluetooth) and then look for Status, and click that. then look for details, it will tell you your IPV4 address. Most windows systems will have some similar thing.
Now insure that your port forwarding in your router is pointing at that IP address. That should work.
Of course, if a parent set up port forwarding, they might have taken it out. They all think you play too many video games. :-)
No one installed a firewall on the system that is running this program, did they? And the program is listed as an exception in the windows firewall and was not updated since it was so listed? That is the next thing I'd look at if the IP address has not changed. From another system on the same lan, try telnetting to the target port and see if it connects at all. Just thoughts, but I think the most likely thing is that it failed because the address changed.