Problems with Socket#write and all that depend on it

Hi all,

I’m having a very, very vexing problem regarding Socket#write and,
therefore, all scripts that depend on it (including WEBrick, thus the
Rails angle.) I posed this problem to the ruby-talk list, but I didn’t
get a response there, so I pose it to you fine people.

In short, my problem is that Socket#write doesn’t return, it just
hangs. I’m using One-click Ruby 1.8.2-15 (and I tried -14, too) on
Windows XP Pro SP2. I’m on a network behind a Linux gateway, but no
proxy is used. I have no local firewall software, nor any software
which I could imagine would affect my network connection. Further,
Ruby works great on all the other machines on my network.

What’s most troubling is this is a new computer, and therefore a
relatively fresh install of Windows that hasn’t been mucked up yet. My
old system ran Ruby fine, as does every other machine on the network,
so I’ll be damned if I can isolate a variable here.

I’d be incredibly appreciative of any help I can get.

-Matt T.