ill answer a few questions i expect to be thrown at me before i even start. Yes i have allowed it on windows firewall and windows firewall is turned off. AVG is off as that stopped some online games from working...
I was playing 4 hours ago perfectly fine. I have just done a clean install and im using the version v0.5Z28 and im still getting the "ConnectToMaster: Error opening socket" error. 
Im on windows 7 64bit. My internet is perfectly fine as my ping in other games is 50-80 depending on which game i play if that matters.
any ideas?
any help is appreciated.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=29454
yes iv read that before someone posts it. still nothing works
on tracer i get
Tracing route to master.liveforspeed.net [213.40.20.2]                          over a maximum of 30 hops:                                                                                                                                        1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  myrouter.home [192.168.0.1]                       
2    46 ms    46 ms    46 ms  dr10.bllon.ov.easynet.net [89.200.128.192]        
3    47 ms    50 ms    54 ms  5adfcf14.bb.sky.com [90.223.207.20]               
4    54 ms    55 ms    60 ms  5adfcf00.bb.sky.com [90.223.207.0]               
 5    60 ms    57 ms    58 ms  5adfcf00.bb.sky.com [90.223.207.0]                
6    57 ms    54 ms    59 ms  10ge-e226-linx.spn.kcom.com [195.66.226.70]       
7    63 ms    60 ms    58 ms  86.54.183.205                                     
8    63 ms    63 ms    65 ms  lds01-ge-lds02.core.netline.net.uk [212.111.131.21]                                                                              
 9    57 ms    60 ms    61 ms  ldscat01-ge-lds01.core.netline.net.uk [213.40.3.73]                                                                             
10    64 ms    64 ms    62 ms  beta.lfs.net [213.40.20.2]                                                                                                      
Trace complete.
Ping 
Pinging master.liveforspeed.net [213.40.20.2] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 213.40.20.2: bytes=32 time=64ms TTL=56
Reply from 213.40.20.2: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=56
Reply from 213.40.20.2: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=56
Reply from 213.40.20.2: bytes=32 time=57ms TTL=56
Ping statistics for 213.40.20.2:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 55ms, Maximum = 65ms, Average = 60ms
it works on my older pc if it helps any. just i cant get my g27 to work on it.