i've just bought an old pc and wanted to network it with my existing one, and ultimately share an internet connection. Both pc's had NIC's in them, my existing pc is connected to the internet through a d-link NIC into 600kbps cable modem. i bought a second NIC to go in the existing pc, realtek, and x-over cable. i put the new realtek NIC in the existing pc, and its pnp so it detected it fine, and installed the drivers. Now the big problem. if i try connect to the internet through the new realtek NIC it says detecting proxy settings and just doesn't connect. if you put the cable back into the old d-link NIC it works fine. the new NIC also stubbornly refuses to find any neighborhood network. both NICS are on different irq's. please help me

You need to have TWO nic cards in your existing Pc (the one connected straight to the internet) in order for Internet Connection Sharing to take place, one NIC, the d-link will be connected from the Internet to your PC, the second NIC card will connect your main/existing PC to the NIC card in the "old pc" you just bought, then try to connect. A total of 3 NICS are needed.

I don't think i explained it very well.
I've got two NICs in the main pc, and one NIC in the other pc. the main pc was already connected to the internet through a d-link NIC, and i added a realtek NIC in order to set up a LAN with the other pc. the second NIC for the LAN, in the main pc (the realtek one)was recognised by my win98se o/s as a pnp device, it installed the drivers, it appears in device manager, and it has a different irq address number, but it will not behave as it should. It would not find the other pc on neighborhood network, so i tried to connect it directly to the internet using IE6. I looked at the back of the tower, and the link light was on, and the data light flashing, but a message in the bottom right of the IE6 screen said "detecting proxy settings" and after a long time looking for my homepage it went to the could not connect screen. As far as i am aware as soon as the pc recognises a new pnp device, and the software and hardware are set right the computers should see each other but they don't, and the even though the pc detects the second NIC it just will noy find the intnet either. i use a mesh computer amd700 chip on gigabyte ga-7ixe board, 256 ram, basic creative s/card, hercules prophet ii mx v/card, 60gig ibm h/drive

Your ISP has recorded the MAC address of your
old NIC. It is the one that is authorized to
connect.

I can see why that would mean the second NIC cannot connect to my ISP, but why won't it see the other pc on the LAN I've set up.
Can I change the MAC address of the second NIC?

Thanks tech-fred for your reply to my post

Have you gone into Control Panel/Network and set the IP and subnet masks for each machine?

The TCP/IP and NetBEUI have been installed, but I'm not sure what I'm doing when I bring up both their properties. There are many file tabs and options. However I think I've done all the easy stuff, like set up the workgroup name and different comp names. I'm still more inclined to think that this is an IP problem of some kind, but that's a non-tekkie stab in the dark. Right now I feel like taking an axe to both pc's. I may have to bite the bullet, and upgrade to XP from win98se.

A guess, I think the connection to the other
computer is bound to the first card. Need
to reinstall/setup.

You can't change the second cards MAC.

Get a router and the problem should be
solved.