After using my p2 266 laptop (running win98) for years as my main computer and surfer, I finally upgraded to a new PC with windows XP Home Edition. The laptop is running a pcmcia ethernet adapter that I know works because I used it for my cable modem which has since been swapped to the new PC. And of course, I know the network card in the PC works because I can surf when its hooked up to the cable modem. All I'm trying to do is get a couple gigs worth of info off of my laptop onto my new computer. I don't need to share internet or even maintain the network after this is done. So I figured that a cat5 crossover cable should be easy and I could just follow the tutorials, guids, and wizards and it should be cake. Wrong... Hooked the cable between the two cards and the 100mbs light on both come on (don't know if this means anything). Ran the Network Setup wizard on my XP main computer, everything seemed like it was going smooth. Ran the Network Setup program on my laptop from the disk that the XP computer created. Once again, no errors and everything seemed like it went fine. But I went to My Network Places in the XP computer and Network Neighborhood in the 98 computer and nothing shows up. Please help.

Place both computers in the same workgroup. Something like Home and give each computer a name like desktop and laptop. Manually assign the IPs. 1 will be 192.168.0.1, subnet 255.255.255.0 the other will be 192.168.0.2, subnet 255.255.255.0 After sharing the drives on the computers you are going to have to setup identical user accounts on both computers and assign permissions to these users for the shared drives/folders or files. Example: Desktop:Create yourself an account using admin permissions call it user1 password 123. This will be your user account you use to log into the desktop. Now create a 2nd account call it user2 password 456. This will be the account the laptop will use to access shared drives/folders or files on the desktop. Laptop:Create an account using admin permissions call it user2 password 456. This will be your user account you use to log into the laptop. Now create a 2nd account call it user1 password 123 this is the account the desktop will use to access shared drives/folders or files on the laptop.

you either need to get a hub or a crossover cable. you cannot connect 2pc's directly from nic to nic with a regular cable.