i have made one of my windows-7 ultimate machine as my server and installed the MySQL server + my front end application
and my server ip is 10.198.168.53

the issue is in my server front end application
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in the connection string if i use server = localhost then connection is working but if i use 10.198.168.53
the bug is unable to connect to any of the MySQL hosts

one more funny thing is , if i connect the Ethernet cable between server & laptop ( my laptop ip is 10.198.168.52 ) then
no problem i mean i can use IP 10.198.168.53 in the connection string , if i remove the cable then the connection string must be localhost.

the checks i did on the Os
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(1) in the OS BIOS network adapter is enabled
(2) system self ping is Ok

what must be wrong here