I'm running a Windows 7 Professional machine from which I remotely administer several networks that I have built through VPN connections that I created and manage. (Hopefully, that will alleviate the necessity for anyone to say to me "Have you checked your internet connection?" This machine performs flawlessly except for the built-in internet games.) It is unpredictable whether or not I will be able to successfully play a game of Internet Spades. One moment, it will connect to the game server, find players, and connect to the game, but fail to start the game. If I try again, it will start the game within a couple seconds. Then again, it may hang while connecting to the server or to the game. But on many days, I can only play a game about half the time that I attempt to. The rest of the time, I get this error: "A network error occurred while communicating with the game server. "Error Code: 0x80041009" On other occasions, the error code is 0x80041006 or 0x80041004. This happens whether I am doing anything else with my connection or not. I might be listening to Pandora or watching a live news stream, but I can't play Spades. I might be able to play Internet Backgammon just fine, but not Spades. Less often, I can play Spades but not Backgammon. And this error happens on other computers that I use, too. For instance, my son can play World of Warcraft just fine. But Internet Spades can't even connect to its server. There is no problem with my computer, and I hope that Microsoft quits blaming their users for the unreliability of their internet games network. I have never seen a gaming network with more unreliable performance -- whatever the reason. Therefore, my question is this: Since the numerous user comments which previously discussed this issue seem to have disappeared and no real solution was ever given to anyone's request for help (other than to blame the user), will I simply have to accept that these games always will be unreliable?