Newbie Home Network help needed

I set up a small network using my desk top and my lap top.
Im running XP Pro On my desktop and XP home on my laptop.
I got the file sharing to work using the set up wizard but I`m not able to connect to my Aol broadband on my laptop my desk top connection is working fine.
Can anyone help me walkthrough this mess?

Hi, do you have DSL or cable through AOL? How is everything setup?

If you have DSL it's possible to share your connection with a router or w/o one- but that's harder.

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I do not have a router.

I use AOL for broadband (dsl i guess broadband always on type)

My modem brand name is "Actiontech Home DSL modem". It`s a external modem connected to a PCI NIC in my desktop computer with a rj-45 cable thats labeled one end to modem one end to computer(suplied with modem)
My desktop computer has a second PCI NIC and it connects to my laptop with a RJ-45 crossover cable.

Thanks hope this is everything you need to know.

Ok, so you do have AOL's DSL. W/O a router you will have to use ICS (Internet Sharing Connection). It's pretty easy to setup with Windows XP. One PC will have to be the server (your desktop) and the others will be clients.

Let us know if you want some help with ICS.

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Yes I Have attempted to use the internet connection sharing feature that windows comes with, but have had no luck, lots of vauge and conflicting information on the web about this subject.

Also have tried using a little proxy server program called analog X
also without success.

I have been doing alot of manually settings adjustments like IP adress ,port ,and protocols etc. And cant even share files between them now.

Heres what I see under Network Connections Desktop Computer:
Catagory: Lan or High Speed Internet
Local area connection #3 - Enabled (NIC connected to crossover )
Local area connection #4 - Enabled,shared,firewalled (NIC to modem)
Heres what I see under Network Connections on my laptop:
Catagory:Lan or High speed internet
Local area connection - Enabled
( Also a new category on laptop called ): Intenet Gateway
Local Area Connection 4 on desktop - Enabled

Ok, remove all of your connections so you are starting from scratch.

On your desktop, get your NIC to see your modem and access the net. Once that is done, get your other NIC working (not accessing the internet or your laptop).

Now, you want to setup ICS. Probably your NIC will have an internal IP of 192.168.0.1, which is fine. Once you have ICS setup on your desktop, make sure you can still get to the net.

If you can, go to your laptop and on the properties of your NIC, put your IP as 192.168.0.2 and your DNS as 192.168.0.1 (whatever your desktop IP is). Also do this for the gateway I belive.

Now check to see if it can access the net, if it can that good. Make sure you can share files now too.

This is not the best way to share a connection, but if that's all you can do than that's fine too.

Hope this helped some.

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Got my 2 computer network going.
Thanks a million I can share files and browse internet from both now. Had to use analog x proxy server software to get it to work ICS was not being very coaperative. Maybe it is my firewall software messing with it or me anyway works now.

Thanks again

That's good that it's working now.

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I can browse and download from my laptop (client) but it won`t establish a connection to my online gambling site.
Any suggestions???

What's the error message? It might be trying to get back through to your connection on a port that your firewall has blocked. If you have the error that might tell the port, if not the site should tell you.

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