Hi there, I'm trying to do the simplest possible thing and I just don't seem to be able to get it sorted. I have two PCs, one with an internet connection (through adsl) and a printer attached to it and I am trying to network the two together. I have wired them together with a single cat5 cable. My problem seems to be down to the ip addresses. On the PC that has the internet connection (#1), I have set the connection to be shared and it has filled in my lan connection with "use the following ip address" 192.168.0.1 with the sub-mask of 255.255.255.0 and "use the following DNS server address" with blank. That seems to be as per the manual. On the other PC (#2) I have set it to "obtain an ip address automatically" and "obtain DNS server address automaticall". Now, the first PC says "connected" next to the LAN connection but when I try and connect the second PC it comes back with a "limited or no connectivity" error and says "the problem occured because the network did not assign a network address to the computer". If I look in details thought it says that it has an ip address of 169.254.93.98 and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 So, the upshot is that it doesn't work. However, if I (on both PCs) put in the same ip address in the same range rather than getting the second one to obtain an ip address automatically then they connect fine, I can share files, share the printer .... but... I then can't share the internet connection. It just doesn't seem to appear on the second PC. So, the first way (by the book) just doesn't work at all. The second way (trial and error) works but I can't find the internet connection on the second PC. Please help - this is driving me mad.

I can make it a lot easier! You are going about it the hard way. Buy a Router, between 19 and 25 dollars, take the cable between the two computers out. Plug the DSL line into the WAN port of the Router. Run a single CAT5 cable from each computer to the Router. Create accounts for each user on both machines (same user name and passwords). The Router will: 1. Act as a DHCP server and assign IP addresses to both machines. 2. Provide a firewall between you and the internet for added security. _________________________ The internet is no longer a toy, it's a COMBAT ZONE!

Darrens, The instructions you are following are partially correct. Yo do however need to have a Default gateway set on the PC with ICS. This is usually the IP of the PC with ICS installed. The preferred DNS is also filled in with the IP of the Host machine. Basically, the ICS sets up the PC as a DHCP server, and this will assign the IP addresses to the other Pc's on your network that have Obtain IP automatically checked.If it fails, Make sure your Firewall is configured correctly. Good Luck