I have a home network with a Win 98se machine using the ICS feature as my host. I have DSL internet service. My son has a Win XP machine and everytime he has had to format the hard drive and reload, we have problems getting it to connect to the internet again. When we first connected it to the network, a technician had us to install the Win XP-SP1 and after that it connected. The second time, my son got it to connect some way without adding the SP1. We have had to recently reload it again and this time nothing has worked. We have gone through all the setup wizzards and installed SP1 but with no luck. It is working on the network but just won't connect to the internet. Any Suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks

Thanks for reading but the problem resolved by itself. With a couple more restarts between the host and client and a couple more pings, it started working. I'll never understand these things.

I am not really into computers that much, but I have a local area network using a router. We have four machines, 1 winxp, 2 ME, and 1 mac. When the XP had the built in windows firewall inititiated, it could not enter the network. I recommend taking off the firewall next time. I am glad that the problem is resolved! Hope whatever I said helps in the future.