EVERYONE WHO IS HAVING THIS ISSUE THIS IS THE SOLUTION TO IT!!!! IT WORKED FOR ME!
Following on from Whizadree's post I can offer a solution which will get you playing online again.
Whizadree is correct, its the HTTP patch server that is down, the gamespy login servers are working fine but red alert will not even attempt to go online until it validates the current version is up to date.
There are two options to fix this:
Instructions 1:
If you trust me and my web server you can fix it really quickly by following these instructions (If you do not trust me(and why would you???) The next set of instructions are a bit more complicated but will fix also fix the problem)
1) Open the start menu
2) type notepad
3) right click notepad and click run as administrator (for Win 8 users Run as Administrator appears at the bottom of the screen when you right click)
4) when notepad has opened go to File > Open
5) go to "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc"
6) on the bottom right of the open dialog where it says "Text Documents (*.txt)" click and change it to "All Files (*.*)"
7) You should now see a file called "hosts", double click on it
8) at the bottom of this file add the line: "109.74.193.57 na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com"
9) save the file and close notepad
10) start RA3 and you should not get the server error.
11) Once the patch server has come back up at some point in the future you can remove that line from your hosts file, follow the same instructions above exacpt delete the line at step 8 instead of adding it.
If EA would like me to take this fix down please contact me.
Instructions 2:
The more technical-savvy people will know that the above set of instructions simply points the na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com domain at the ip 109.74.193.57 which is a server I own which simply returns a 200 to any request made to it.
However, if you don't trust my server to always be good to you, you can follow these instructions to replicate this setup on your own machine:
I will assume some computer knowledge in these instructions
1) Grab a copy of EasyPHP (or similar if you know what this program does and use an alternative, the below instructions are for EasyPHP)
2) Install Easy PHP, Start EasyPHP With Admin rights!, if it complains about Skype using port 80, quit skype, click Apache and click start, then you can restart Skype.
3) In the EasyPHP window, click the little eon the top left next to the Apache button, click "Administration", it will open up a web browser window
4) under the modules heading click recommended modules, click download and install under "Virtual Hosts Manager"
5) download and install the Virtual Hosts manager program
6) go back to administration screen for easyPHP (click the e and click Administration)
7) under modules to the right of Virtual Hosts manager click "add a virtual host" if you get a big red warning that you do not have the rights blah blah, you didnt start easyphp with admin rights, close easyphp and restart it with admin rights.
8) under 2. create a name for the Servername put "na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com"
9) under 3. Copy below the path... put "C:\ea" (or a path of your choosing, we will need to create 2 files here later on)
10) click I have read the warning >> Save
11) now go to C:\ea (or wherever you set as your directory path)
12) create a file called "index.php" with no contents it Must be empty!
13) create a file called .htaccess (how you do this is up to you, I use Notepad++ and save the file with that name, windows explorer wont let you create a file with a . as its first letter)
14) in the .htaccess file put the following lines:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
15) save the file and then visit the URL: "http://na.llnet.eadownloads.ea.com/u...1.12.patchinfo" in your web browser, you should see a blank page, if not something went wrong above.
16) Open RA3 and you will now get past the silly server down error message.
17) To undo all of the above, delete the folder with your files in, uninstall easyphp, and go to "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts" and remove the line that easyphp add to your hosts file.
If you have any problems let me know.
If EA would like me to disable the functionality on my webserver to respond to the patch request just let me know.
