Hello, I apologize for the length of this post, just trying to be detailed for you. I have been working on a simple network between my Laptop and my Desktop for a long time now. I have run the network setup on both computers, tried static IPs, automatic IPs, and a combination of both. All I would like to do is setup both computers so I may transfer files between them. I have 2 NICs on the Desktop running XP Pro (one for the internet and one for the network) and one NIC on the Desktop running XP Home. At the moment the Laptop is setup to connect to another computer that connects to the Internet with the IP 192.168.0.2, and the Desktop is setup be the computer that others connect to to get to the Internet and both are in the same workgroup with the IP 192.168.0.1. With these settings the Laptop can see itself and the Desktop in the workgroup, but the Desktop can see neither. I have no idea what I need to do and am getting extremely frustrated. If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix my problem, or how to remove all of the current settings and start over please let me know. Thanks, Jonathan

This should be a fairly simply task in XP, however here it goes... 1. I am assuming you have a "real" crossover cable, even though they look pretty much like regular lan cables, they are not! 2. In XP, in computer identification, give it a workgroup name, something like "HOMEGROUP" and name each computer differently. To do this right click on the My computer Icon, and select properties. Then go to the Computer Name Tab, and give your computer a name, like "comp1" and also, click on the "Change" button on the bottom right, make sure you select "workgroup" and give it a name. 3. Repeat above steps on the laptop, name computer to "comp2" or something like that, make sure you DO NOT GIVE IT THE SAME NAME. 4. Setup your network protocols, add in your LAN CONNECTION, your necessary items, such as Client for Microsoft Network, File and print sharing services, and TCP/IP. Configure TCP/IP USING PRIVATE IP ADDRESS, like 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2 for desktop, and laptop respectively. 5. Make the drives shared. To do this right click on the harddrive icons, and select share. Follow the the wizard there...it's pretty simple....just give a share name and click ok. After this you are pretty much setup to go, you might need to reboot, and for the first time I will recomment to do a search computer, and look for the computer that is attached to the other end...say you are connecting from comp1 to comp2, search for comp2. It should show once it is found, after that you should be able to go to your regular my network places and see it there..... HOpe it helps.... Note: I might have skipped some information, but I am in a time constraint...post back if need more help... GIS_tech

By the way, I was referring to the NIC you are using for the workgroup, not the one for DSL, or your internet connection. That one is assigned an automatic ip address in most of the cases... GIS_tech