I am trying to network a Win XP Home and Win 98 machine. I am using a Cat5 crossover because I have no hub. I used the XP setup wizard as I wanted to share internet from XP machine. I also shared folders on each machine, however I can't see the other machine from either computer. This is really frustrating me. The Win 98 machine tells me that the network is not accessible and the Win XP machine tells me that the workgroup is not available. Please help it would be greatly appreciated. Isn't this supposed to be easy for Windows machines!!! Good on ya Bill Gates. Can you also email any responses directly to me. (bathory@spin.net.au)

have you assinged IP addresses to the NIC's.. if so can you ping one machine from the other? eishv

No I didn't assign IPs. I ran the home network setup wizard on the XP and then on the 98 machine. The XP machine assigns its own IP and then the 98 machine should be able to get its IP assigned from the XP machine. The problem I am having is that they just won't talk to each other. The cable is fine I have checked it heaps of times but it just won't work. This morning I mucked around with IPX/SPX protocols and actually got the XP machine to find the 98 machine but couldn't transfer any files, plus the speed of connection seemed woeful. I still couldn't see the XP machine from the 98 machine either. Whenever I go to network neighbourhood and try to click on entire network it tells me that the network is not accessible. I would rather use the TCP/IP protocol but its just not working. Maybe I need a pro to come in and set it all up for me.

IPX is a novell protocol, you don't want to go there!. if you want to try setting up IP manually.. on the 98 PC.. right click network neighberhood>properties scroll down the list untill you see tcp/ip bound to your NIC double click it and select set ip manually give it an ip of 192.168.2.2 and subnet of 255.255.255.0 click on the gateway tab. enter 192.168.2.1 in the gateway and click add. ok twice and reboot. on XP right click my network places>properties right click local area connection>properties double click tcp/ip set ip to 192.168.2.1 subnet 255.255.255.0 and gateway 192.168.2.1 no need to reboot XP. om 98 open a dos box and >ping 192.168.2.2 >ping 192.168.2.2 same on XP.. it should work unless you have a Haredware or tcp stack problem... hope that right.. it's early in the morning here so i may have missed something.. good luck