i have recently attempted to connect two PC together, but to my dismay this is proving a troublesome task... problem being is that i have connected both of the PCs to a network many times... just not together... The other PC is using XP Pro SP1, is P4 1.8 i believe and has 256MB RAM. Which i shall call computer 2. At this point in time i have been able to get computer 2 to ping computer 1, but not the other way around - (Timeout). Neither Computers are able to map new network drives... computer 1 says it does not have permission to access computer 2. computer 1 also says it does not have access. I have disabled all firewalls and added each others IP (not ports, dont know enought about them) to exception lists too... still nothing... any ideads, post more questions here and i will do my best to answer them to help you find the solution to my problem. Thanks - Dan

With regards to the network drives the problem is probably down to file permissions. If you want to make life easy turn on simple file sharing in Folder Options for both PCs, and then everything is shared and access as Guest. If you want more security, turn off simple file sharing but you must have the same users and passwords on both machines if you want access to work. Make sure both computers are in the same subnet (usually 255.255.255.0) and they have separate IPs. With regards to firewalls, the ports that need to be opened for File and printer sharing are TCP 139 and 445, and UDP 137 and 138. But you really don't need a firewall between two computers on a LAN, just on the interface that connects to the internet. Hope this helps