C&C Generals: Zero Hour help online

I recently got C&C after playing it at a LAN gaming place, and decided
to buy it. I played around on single player a bit, then wanted to go
online...

Well, I tried 3 games... All 3 of them, I got in, they started, and
the second the game started, it froze. when I hit escape to exit, the
escape menu came up, then went away in half a second. when I hit
enter, the chat box came up, then went away in half a second. I could
move around and look at the map (although the fog was still there of
course), I could select my base and my worker. When I tried to tell my
base to build a worker, I heard the sound, and then nothing happened.
when I told my worker to move, the green thingy that appears when you
tell it to move, appeared and stuck on the screen... and if I did it
again, I had 2 stuck on the screen, etc.. When I told it to build
something, absolutely nothing happened but the sound. You get the
point...

The third time, after 1 minute, the game started! I was happy! Half a
second later it froze again. I waited 5 minutes, then closed the game
with Ctrl+Alt+Delete like I did the other 2 times...

I tried the "FirewallPortOverride". I tried opening that port up on my
router... I saw people had a list of like 9 ports to open, and decided
not to try because my router has a limit of 20 ports, and I have alot
of other games I play online... Is there any other way?