SRB2 freezing when trying to connect (before MS went down)

Considering this isn't my problem so much as a friend's that hasn't registered (Yet?), this may be a bit tricky.

Anyway, apparently everytime he's tried the Join Game (Search) function, the game just "stops". It freezes at the screen and doesn't really allow him to do anything else, either on SRB2 or off, and he has to turn the computer off. I'm a bit curious as to what's causing the problem...He's definitely connected to the internet, Internet is set to Yes in the server options. I'm a bit confused on it all.

The server he's trying to connect to, which is the master server, is down. Be sure to actually look through the forum for this kind of problem before posting a topic about it.

Was this happening before today?

Yeah, actually. It's been happening this entire week, since he's gotten the game, whereas I've been able to search the server just fine (except, obviously, that it's been down).

Sorry, I should've said that before. I'm aware that it's down right now >_<"

He COULD just be heavily firewalled and it's taking a long time to queue the masterserver. I tried playing a netgame on a school computer once. I clicked "Join game" and it took about 2 minutes before ANYTHING would respond. If there's a software firewall loaded, it may need configured to actually allow SRB2 to access the internet. If he's using Zonealarm, a box is probably popping up, but you can't see it. Did you try hitting "Y" or enter or something?