Well, I finally broke down and reformatted my system and reinstalled black op. I am still having the same problem. The only servers that show up on the list are servers 6 and the boot camp server. I am out of ideas. Anybody know of a solution other than a sledgehammer? And no its not my filter settings. Tried that. If I go to my friends and try to join in progress it won't let me do that either. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. If i can't get it working I'm afraid I'm going to have to wait until MW3 comes out and give up on black ops.

Fixed your post for ya*see red*.  LOL.  On a serious note, thats a stumper.  I havent had any issues with the MP on Black Ops, i have however had the exact issue you are describing with Zombies.  I invited my friend(or vice verse) and it would just say connecting, but never connect.  One time i left it, and 10 minutes later i was in a game all by myself.  It was weird.  Have you tried validating your CoD files?

Def something CoD related.

I'm going to try validating files.  I've run it before and it came up with nothing, but that was before my reformat. I'll see what happens.  By the way, Thanks for the fix in my post.  I think you may be right about the BF3.

No dice. Files all valid and defraged.  Still just 2 servers out of 7 in favs. BF3 here I come!

The best way to solve this is to get into server 6 with a fellow BK, then get him to join each server and invite you in. Voila (fingers crossed) you will have been in every server and can add them to your favourites from the recent list.
Good Luck!

Thanks. I will try it and see what happens.

After the recent patch a Mods filter was added to the game. If you do not see any servers then it is possible that this filter is set to "Yes". In the server browser click the "Filters" button at the bottom of the browser screen and make sure that the Mods filter is set to "No".

Be sure that your computer is not behind a software or hardware firewall of any kind. This includes firewalls built into routers or other equipment, as well as programs like Zone Alarm, Black Ice, and the integrated firewall in Windows. Activision does not support the use of our games from behind a firewall. If it is not possible to disable the firewall you will need to open the ports for Call of Duty: Black Ops. Black Ops transmits and receives network traffic on port 3074 (UDP and TCP). Additionally the Steam client transmits and receives network traffic on ports UDP: 27000-27015, 27015-27030 and TCP: 27014-27050. The exact details on opening a port is specific to your firewall. For more information check with the firewall documentation or manufacturer.

Another common cause of problems is a poorly configured router or connection sharing solution. If you are using a router, ICS, NAT or a software gateway you may have problems playing on the internet. This is because the router may not be forwarding the correct information back to your machine. It may be possible to get around this problem using port forwarding or DMZ. You can find more information on configuring shared connections for multiplayer gaming at www.practicallynetworked.com. Please be aware that like a firewall we cannot actively support using shared connections to play online.

The most common cause of problems though is usually the simplest - an overburdened network stack. By default many computers have protocols the average person doesn't use; things like VPN or NDISWAN. You may want to contact your ISP to find out exactly which protocols you can safely remove. Often times network game problems are resolved by something as simple as removing unused adapters and protocols.

The problem may also be related to the status of your ISP or that of the server. Due to the dynamic nature of the internet and the variable levels of traffic, it is impossible to completely eliminate this error. If you are having persistent problems you may wish to try a different server, or just wait and play a little while later.

If you have an AMD X2 processor on Windows XP please go to http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html and download and install the AMD Dual-Core optimizer and the processor driver.

if this don't help go here for more answers.

black ops no servers

Cypher - very comprehensive.
One other thing that helped was disabling the resident In-memory scanner for AVG.