Hello guys. New to all this PC stuff but trying. Heres the problem. I have 2 Old desktop type PC's. I wanted to hook them together, so not knowing how I read some stuff and gave it a shot. Host pc is old Dell with Win98se. The other is Amd with Win98. I have Comcast cable connection. This is how I hooked it up. With only one ethernet card on the host I wasn't able to hook the way all the differn't manueal' insisted on with 2 Ethernets Cards on the host with Win98 se. I ran the Cat5 cable between the nick cards on both pc's and connected the Comcast modem with the USB hookup to the host PC USB connection. Enabled File sharing on a folder on both PC's just to see if it would work Well when I fired everything up I can see the folder on each that's been specified and can surf the net on the Client pc quite well also.Here's the problem.. After about an hour or less the host will freeze, I'll lose the page on the client and it goes down hill from there. When I go to reboot the host pc I always have to Control. alt .Delete to shut it down otherwise all I see is the hourglass forever. Once rebooted and with the Zonealarm disabled on the Client all is wonderfull once again for an hour or less. then freeze time once again. After all the nightmare stories Iv'e read about hooking 2 win98 pc's together I'm amazed I got it working at all but this is driving me insane!What am I missing? Is Comcast doing this 2 me or is some setting off or what? Slickchick

did the computer that freezes ever run without freezing?? before the network was setup?? the freezing could be caused by bad memory/overheating. might be best to use a 4 port hub between the computers

uppercrust. the old Dell I'm using as the host never froze before this network attempt of mine. After I reboot it's all fine again till it freeze's once more. I read somewhere about Comcast wanting all those that network to purshase another IP. Could that be the problem or is that just a money ploy or is it the way I have it hooked up? Find it hard belive that Comcast gets the signal and cuts me off but I don't know. Any idea's that might help? Slick

Its not a comcast thing. Worse that could happen if it was comcast is no internet access. A invalid web page doesn't lock up the pc. You don't mention loading antivirus or doing spyware scans. This is more likely the problem. Sounds like a old equipment problem. Have you opened up the case and blown out the dust? Check the fans. Just because they spin doesn't mean they spin fast enough. Should be able to see temps in the bios of the cpu but your mainboard may be too old to have this option.

Since you're using Win98SE run the ICS Wizard on the host PC and set up TCP/IP on the client to "assign IP Address automatically" and "Use DHCP Server for WINS resolution". On both PCs setup ZoneAlarm to see 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.255.255 as local. What's happening, I think, is that both PCs are getting their IP addresses from Comcast's server and about once an hour Comcast tries to "renew" the lease. It may not be able to see the client PC through your host's firewall so the client loses connection. If you did a "winipconfg/renew" from the client when it loses connection you might be able to recover manually, but Comcast really doesn't want to lease 2 IP addresses to you and if you look in the Service Agreement you may find this is grounds for termination. Setting up ICS avoids the problem by creating a Local Area Network (LAN) with a host PC. Your client gets an internal IP address from the host and uses its Comcast-assigned IP address as a gateway to the Internet. You're right about this being impoossible with Win98; you had to buy a 3rd party DHCP Server emulator or a router because ICS wasn't available before Win98SE. It's still easier with a router but ICS is a "poor man's" DHCP Server.

Wanderer and Orion. thanks so much for trying to help. I will try all your suggestions (hopefully wont break anything)and post back early am tomorrow. Would love to make this work but know so little. Slick

Buy a router.. Problem solved.