Please help before I run out of hair and fingernails, this has been going on for days now.

I used to have a home network set up between a WinXP host and a WinMe client. Nothing fancy both machines installed with Realtek NIC cards and Cat5 cable to connect the two. File and printer sharing and ICS worked fine.

For some bizarre reason, out of the blue, the host (WinXP machine) started powering down when I accessed FTP from either the Host or the Client. All fingers pointed at ICS Firewall but I didn't have this installed, I use Zone Alarm Pro. And anyway all had been hunky dory for months before.

Not long after this I lost the ability to share files and printers and the situation at the moment is this:

1) WinXP host with WinMe Client has ICS working, Client can connect to the Internet.

2) Cannot share files or printers.

3) Client can ping Host

4) Host cannot ping Client (request timed out).

I've bought a new cable this morning and both NICs have lights on/flashing when they should.

Has anyone got any ideas? If I were on a boat both these machines would be getting used as anchors right now!

hello
heres m.e networking truble shooting link by juneau
http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/24211.html
spacificaly for m.e

Hmm, thanks but already tried that and did not do any good.

However I have found a solution if anyone is interested:

I was using a Speedtouch USB adsl modem on the WinXP, for which I have an issue with the drivers (unsigned drivers cause system errors, updated version causes modem to disconnect every 5 minutes).

So I went back to a previous configuration of having the WinME as my host with the modem connected, bizzarely WinME is more stable in this case!!! and the WinXP as client. Network set up using the wizards, no tweaks necessary.

Bingo! everything works OK. I have contacted Thomson (makers of the Alcatel Speedtouch) for their comments and advice but if anyone has had similar problems with this modem on WinXP maybe start up a thread in the correct forum?