What is the firewall you're behind? My suggestion is to, in order:
Download zonealarm,
disable the windows XP firewall,
disable and/or uninstall any other firewall you have (besides zonealarm)
Zonealarm works well, and is very easy to configure.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
I tried disabling the windows firewall and that didn't do anything, still the 10053 error. As far as I know I was behind no firewall at this point. If there is another firewall... ... wish me luck. When I go to control panel -> security center the only firewall listed is windows firewall, which didn't affect mIRC.
This irc thing is so complicated... I did some research and found that CGI IRC, which allows access to irc channels from your browser (you can't DCC, but who cares). But that is a job for the people who take care of #nesvideos.
You mean IRC could become a rainstorm in my browser?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Something new. When I disabled both avast and windows firewall and tried to get in irc.freenode.net:6668 it says "Connection Refused" very soon after trying to connect. The 10053 error usually doesn't show up for a while. I don't know if this means I am closer or farther from getting on though.
EDIT: More news. Using HydraIRC instead of mIRC I was able to irc.freenode.net:8000 and a couple minutes later it disconnected me said socket error 10053 and reconnected again. Now I just have to figure out where to go from here...
Well, if you want a strictly direct way of attempting to connect, try this; it's the one I'm connected to at the moment.
/server kornbluth.freenode.net:6667