🚀 go-pugleaf

hello,im using a socketconnection component to connect to a
datasnap server.i do socketconnection->connected=true; the code is in a
separate thread and i have some application->processmessages in order to get 
some visual
feedback (e.g. a messagebox before it starts connected and a messagebox if 
it connects).
the code is of course in a try catch .

the issue is the following:
when i try to connect to an existing pc it does what its supposed to do 
almost immediately,
if the datasnap server is up it connects ,if its not up (e.g. if im not 
running the scktsrv.exe)it throws an exception.

when i try to connect to an not existing pc (wrong ip) the system freezes 
and waits for a rather
big timeout.

if i try to connect to a firewalled pc (which blocks such incomming) it 
freezes again and waits for
a rather big timeout again.

is this something i can fix?the waiting timeout is very big,and the program 
freezes (although its in its own
thread).

i thought of first pinging the remote pc to see if its up and then try to 
connect to it but that would introduce
another waiting time(the ping waiting time)
what do people usually do to deal with this kind of problems?

thks