Internet Sharing Problem on 2 PCs (1 Viewer)

[Will K]

I have two PC's: an older Pentium II 350 and a new Athlon 1.7 with Win XP

When I bought the new one last Xmas, the old one was running Windows 2000. I set up ICS with the new PC as the host. I bought a crossover cable and it worked fine until one day the old computer simply no longer recognized the connection. Nothing new had been installed or changed. Windows 2000 had always acted a bit squirrely on the old one, so I reformatted the hard drive, did a fresh install of Windows XP so both machines would be running the same OS, and installed a new network card to boot.

I have run the XP networking wizard on both. Each computer will recognize the other one under "My Network Places" but will not access them. The (two-way) cable modem works perfectly on the new PC but and the old one seems to recogize the connection but will not access the internet at all.

I'm kind of at a loss now. I feel like I've checked everything and looked at every online guide to try to figure it out. Is it possible faulty hardware or components(like the motherboard) could be causing this?

If anyone has any, any possible insight into what may be causing the problem, I would grateful.

 

[Bill Wise]

Will,

A couple suggestions off the top of my head...

... check both machines' IP addresses and make sure they are in the same subnet.

... check both machines and make sure they are in the same Workgroup.

... use the same login name on both machines.

... make sure the older machine has the newer machine's IP address as its Gateway.

If none of this helps, a little more info from you might help us sort it out, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Regards,

Bill

 

[Will K]

Thanks, Bill. I'll check it out.

 

[DaveGTP]

I had to run the ICS wizard a twice every time I did something. For some reason the first time I would always get an error, but the second time it worked ok. Did you use the setup disk that ICS makes for you to set up the second (non-connected) PC? For deeper investigation, Bill's comments are good. The login name doesn't have to be the same on both machines but they definitely should be in the same workgroup.

 

[Will K]

I appreciate the input, gentlemen. But alas, now I've seem to have tried everything now. My gut tells me it's not the software. Something in there must be fried. Who knows? Thanks, though!

 

[Eric Samonte]

I'm having a sort of the same problem. At first, it wouldn't even get into the internet, until I clicked on the TCP/IP thingy. Now I get internet but the laptop is not seen by my network nor can I see it in the network. Its all on the same workgroup. I looked up the settings on the other machines and found that Client for Microsoft Networks, QoS packet scheduler and File and Print Sharing for MS Networks are all installed. I tried doing that to the new laptop but apprently it cannot be done unless I uninstall the TCp/IP protocol.
Seems like I'm blabbing on and on but if anyone has any ideas....

BTW, I'm on a Linksys Wireless network, using BEFW11S4 V.2, NIC via Cat5 on 2nd PC and Linksys WPC11V2 on the laptop.

 

[Eric Samonte]

An update....I uninstalled the driver for the wireless PC card on the lappy then reinstalled it. Beforehand, I enabled the WEP encrytion, put in my new SSID, etc, starting on the mainbox with the Cable modem wireless router and did that all over the network. The laptop now sees the network and is visible to every PC on said network. I checked and it automatically installed the Client for MS, down to the TCP/IP protocol.

 

[Will K]

Well I've pretty much given up on this. I've uninstalled and reinstalled all the TCPIPs, done everything over, and even tried a static client configuration to no avail. Wasn't meant to be I guess! I appreciate all the input, though.

 

[Chad Ellinger]

Did you try replacing the crossover cable that connects the two PCs?

You might want to consider purchasing a hardware router to share your internet connection. There are several advantages to this.

1. Routers use Network Address Translation (NAT) which protects yours PCs' IP addresses from being exposed to the outside world.
2. Because the router is dedicated to sharing the connection, you don't need to keep one of the computers on 24x7 in order to use the internet on the second computer.
3. Adding new computers to a router is easy.

You can pick up a cable/dsl router with wireless capabilities for only $50 after rebate. Netgear and Linksys are good brands to look for. Here's an example.