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Thanks guys. My girlfriend is away with her laptop for a week. I'll give some of this a go when she returns. Much appreciated.

Another note: My computer is able to see her computer with the Firewall on. But, hers cannot see mine with the Firewall on, though it CAN with the Firewall off. The Firewall has File and Printer Sharing turned on under exceptions. Her Local Area Connection also says it's connected at 100 MBPS. But, I cannot connect to the internet with the Firewall on or off. I turned off auto connect on her dialer, so that no longer pops up. And I set an exception for Firefox and IE and tried both, but they fail to connect. FTP also has an exception, so tried connecting with the command line but no luck. It *looks* like she's connected to the internet but it's no go. Am I correct in guessing that the "1394 connection" is the network speed and connectivity (400 Mbps) and the Local Area Connection (100Mbps) is for the internet? Her and mine show the same speeds on both.

Okay, so both computers have "obtain IP address automatically" turned on. And, LO! If I turn off the Windows Firewall, they can ping each other and can connect as a network. Woo hoo! BUT, I don't want to be on the internet without a firewall and don't want to currently buy another firewall. Do you guys know how to allow the network and internet to work with the Firewall on? I guess it's a matter of setting exceptions, but I don't know what's the most secure and reliable way to set this up properly. Any and all pointers is appreciated. Also, as far as the internet goes, on her computer, when we start a browser, a dialer pops up that we don't want to use. I don't want a dialer. Hoping it can just be connected when I connect MY computer.

I went into her Local Area Connection properties and under TCPIP it already says "obtain IP address automatically".

BTW: The reason I was trying to set up ICS is this: my provider has a dialer for connecting. I assumed that I would either have to use a dialer on her computer too, in which case the provider might try to double my charges, or use ICS. Is there an easier way to share the connection? I'm open to whatever is easiest, of course.

I guess he has one already? So you are not using the DLink as router (why not ?) but as hub for Internet Connection Sharing, via your computer which is connected to a modem, right ? First thing I see is your PC (".0.1") is not on the same subnet as you GF's (".1.2") , so you can't ping it. I thought ICS needed "other" PCs to use DHCP ? Set your GF's on automatic IP to see if it solves anything. Yeah, I have a router. It's set up like this: ADSL modem | |_Router | |_my PC |_ girlfriend's PC Their both plugged into the router. How would I go about setting her computer on automatic IP??? Any help is, as always, appreciated. Thanks guys.

Use menu View / Toolbars, untick "Lock the Toolbars", then drag the "handle" to the left. For your network problem, is the router set on DHCP ? Can both computers ping the router ? If not, check network card speeds and if applicable, Subnet Masks. Thanks! The router itself didn't have any settings that I could set when I installed it. It's a D Link ADSL-2 router. It had a phone sized plug to plug in ADSL, but that wire is already being used to go to the modem itself. I plugged in a regular ethernet cable to connect the modem to the router instead. This works fine for my computer which has no problem connecting to the internet. I'm trying to use it so that my computer is the host driving the internet connection and so that my girlfriend's computer can connect through my computer. I followed the Windows instruction when running the Netowrk Setup Wizard as far as this goes. Anyway, there's no DHCP setting or any settings that I can find for the router itself. But, I connect through "PPP adapter MattADSL", which says "DHCP enabled: NO". The IP address is variable for this. Don't know if I can ping the router. I tried pinging 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.101 without success, but I don't know the router's IP address. How do I check Network card speeds? And, here's the other information: Firewall IS on on both computers. But turning it off and trying pings does nothing. My computer: Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: ip address: 192.168.0.1 subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 default gateway: blank MattADSL: ip address: variable subnet mask: 255.255.255.255 default gateway: variable Her computer: ip address: 192.168.1.2 subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 default gateway: 192.168.1.1 \\otherpcname - what error do you get? "Windows cannot find '\\ilustrator'. etc..." (same with Firewall on or off) \\otherpc'sipaddress - what error do you get "Windows cannot find '\\ilustrator'. etc..." (same with Firewall on or off) network stack: what protocol is being used for file sharing? what client is being used? No idea. This is Windows XP, and turning on sharing on a folder under properties. is file sharing enabled on both? Yes. are firewalls on either computer? Yes. is the windows firewall enabled on either computer? Yes. ping othercomputername "ping request could not find 'ilustrator'. etc. ping othercomputeripaddress "host unreachable". Thanks for taking the time to take a look, guys.

Tried it in IE, though, and it didn't do anything.

Thanks for the reply. Having LOADS of trouble with this. I think it may be a hardware issue. The computers cannot ping each other in the shell. So, this idea of yours might not work. Her ipconfig shows her IP as 192.168.1.102, which I tried to ping from my computer and it didn't return anything. But, I cannot even try it. The other computer is my girlfriends. Her explorer is acting weird. The address bar wasn't showing, so I turned that on. Under the tools/folder options I also turned on "show full path in address bar", but it's not working. I have it set up this way on my computer and it works fine. On her computer, it says "address" at the far right, but there's no actual address. And there's no divider bar to drag over if it was hidden in there or something. Pretty weird.

Noob here. I'm having trouble networking and none of my techy friends could help on this. I have two laptops running XP Home, both connected to an ADSL router. I ran the network setup wizard on both. Both have the workgroup MSHOME. I right clicked one folder on my machine and set it to share. When in Network places, when I click "view computers in workgroup" either computer only shows itself. I was under the impression that they should show each other. Do I need to somehow connect to the network or is automatic. Sorry for the noob questions and thanks for any and all help. -Z