I suspect it is your OS, the ws2_32.dll is written for & works with windows 2000 & later which are NT based, it didn't work with winmx either on 9x systems, and a different dll was used, without experimentation I can't confirm if FXS would connect using the 9x winmx dll, meanwhile, on 98 I would recommend a hosts file, although sadly the most common one has been out of date for some time & those responsible for maintaining it frankly don't seem to care...