USB male to male cable not recognised by laptops

Assuming you already know what to do or have the software once you do it what you meed is a nul modem cable. There are specialty USB cables like this.

If you don't use this its like one person holding a telephohe headset upside down... each side won't be listening to what the other is saying at the correct places. For the more technically schooled you handshaking signals won't appear on the correct pins.

A male what to a male what? Ethernet? USB? Serial??

Doesn't matter... a male anthing to a male anything will be butting heads usually.

At a deeper level you really need to know DCE or DTE as well. Not just the pysical connector type. But a crossover cable is what you would call it in most cases. AS it crosses over tx signals to the RX pins at the other end.. rather than be straight through.

If we know the specific interface whe could provide a link to a graphic image detailing in in greater detail.

Ah man, I suck - I *just* noticed he had "USB" in the original question. Time for a nice Earl Grey tea.

Ah man, I suck - I *just* noticed he had "USB" in the original question. Time for a nice Earl Grey tea.
That makes the best Iced tea... :D My personal favorite.

Question about his cable however... it better be a xover (cross-over) type or its not going to work. I think a crossover lan cable between ethernet ports would be easier to deal with and most newer machines have one. Only time I've dealt with a Xover usb cable was in conjunction with PC relocation software.

Crossover ethernet is the most common way I agree. Getting a cheap router would do the trick too.

I was curious about the USB cable idea and found this:
Connecting Two PCs Using a USB-USB Cable | Hardware Secrets (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/248)
Connect Two Computers Together - Networking 2 Home Computers (http://compnetworking.about.com/od/homenetworking/a/connecttwocomp.htm)

It's a special USB cable.

There are some USP cables that have a small flash drive with software that makes it easy to Migrate to a new MS Windows computer I forgot who makes them