I use a crossover cable to connect my PC and laptop, both running W2K - works fine.

Tonight I was building a machine running XP and went to connect it to my 2K machine to share the net connection and transfer some files across but it will not see that there's a network cable attached, nor will the 2K machine detect that a network attachment has been made.

On the XP machine, Device manager shows that the NIC (on motherboard) is running and 'working correctly'. Ipconfig returns an IP and subnet mask. TCP/IP is configured to obtain IP & DNS automatically. LAN port is enabled in BIOS (LAN Boot Rom is disabled)

Is there something different in XP that I need to be doing? Win 2K was easy to set up and works fine. Any suggestions greatfully received.

the cables fine right? You didn't stretch it?

Have you tried running the XP wizard then taking the floppy disc across? That always works for me.... oh and make sure the firewall crap is turned off

he he!!!

I'm having the extact same prob at the moment

Can't get my Windows 2000 machine to connect to my house mates WinXP machine.

The cable works fine from PC - Xbox.

All I get on XP is a "limited" connection
Meaning no shared internet and machines can't see each other!

Gonna leave it till new year, but if you find some magic solution let us know

Cable is fine, I checked it with my laptop.

You know how the taskbar icon changes, and you get a speech bubble saying 'Network Cable Connected' ?

Well there's none of that, both just stay as disconnected, neither sees the other.

Firewall and Antivirus are turned off. Doing my noodle in.

P.S. Any way to turn off those annoying bubbles that tell me EVERY time I log on that my computer isn't protected becuase I disabled the Firewall and AV?

yes there is double click that shield and in the security dialogue on the left is a link to 'change the way security centre alerts me' and jus uncheck the boxes

eh? wot appened there, jus tried to edit post and has doubled it

if i keep at it i could change my name to d0c

Fantastic, thanks d0c!

Erm..... PN.

Something is seriously fucked up with Windows XP in this matter, I can't connect my laptop to my PC. They both have WinXP installed. Several friends of mine had the same problem. What we usually do is install the old rusty IPX protocole - they immediately see each other then.

well my net pc (win2k) and my media pc (winXP) are hooked up via a switch and altho i can run a proxy and surf the web etc thu my win 2k pc from the XP pc i cant actually connect to any shares on the win2k pc at all!! i can browse the winXP pc from the win2k one no problems!! accounts on the pc's are both the same with identical passwords. ip's are trusted on my firewall and can ping pc

Well, I've got a little LAN in my house. 2 machines run XP Pro and the the other Win98 or XP Pro. Initially all were wired connections but now I've 2 on wireless (the other still wired thru a HUB - a mess I know, but it all works OK) and all share my ADSL connection. The only problem I encountered was using the Win Xp wizard which screwed me up for a while until I finally bit the bullet and did it all manually.

It's difficult to help someone else configure their network but I can only advise to keep it simple and take it a step at a time (disabling ALL firewalls first). Nominate your main PC and set that up first - and do it manually (Router, LAN, ICS whatever enabled and configured correctly). After that configure each PC individually, ensuring the sharing of both files and Router/internet connection work OK until moving on to the next.

If any connection reports as something bollox like 169.128.X.X whatever then the IP translation is phooked for some reason - for ad-hoc set one PC to 192.168.0.1 (especially if your using ICS, XP dislikes anything but for some reason) and subnet 255.255.255.0 and set teh other to 192.168.0.2. If the second PC is connecting through the other using ICS then set the Default Gateway to the firsts ie. 192.168.0.1 and the Preferred DNS the same. Missing this bit in XP always screwed me up with a p2p ad-hoc connection, As I said before it is always better to do it manually than using that shitty XP network wizard.

My only problem now is I have an ad-hoc portion of my network that cannot use WPA wireless encryption, only WEP. But I've since found a soft WAP program that I'm gonna try that supports WPA - softAP from PCTel, except it ain't free - yet!!

is my job so i kno roughly wot i doin i jus get lazy @home it works browsing from 2k to xp. so can transfer stuff either way and printers are shared and work ok between the two (which is basically all i want it to do anyway)so cant b arsed to work out futher

Looks like the problem was a dodgy onboard LAN port. I disbaled it and put a network card in and it would 'see' a network connection being made as soon as I plugged in.

Didn't go any further, as he's connecting it to his own network so he can sort out the settings.