I have a private network, consisting of 2 machines (server/client), with a 10.00.01. Something IP address and is a member of a Workgroup. I now want to add the Internet to these two machines so I installed a second NIC in both and set it for DHCP. Each network is through its own router. I can see traffic on each NIC but I can't connect to the internet. The private network is functioning fine. If I remove the ethernet cable from the private NIC then the 2nd NIC brings the internet in fine. I suppose I could leave it this way and manually unplug the NIC cable but there must be a better way of doing this. The OS is WinXP.

I would appreciate some knowledge or thoughts on this problem if anyone has the time.

Thanks in advance.

There's one thing I can say here and its YUKK!!
What a convoluted way of sharing your connection.

I must ask why you decided to approach this issue in the way you have ?

You need a SINGLE Router as this setup is overly complex.
Now the exact type you need depends on your internet connection, either Cable or DSL.
Here's a coupld of How-To's for networking
Wired networking Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/setup/wired.mspx)
Wireless Networking Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/moredone/wirelesssetup.mspx)
Should give you some more ideas.

Remember the KISS Principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_principle).

I agree with Curlyben on this. Keep it simple if you can. In the meantime your problem is that you likely have a default gateway configured on your original NIC. Remove that default gateway and you should be all set.

The reason why unplugging the cable makes things work is that when you unplug that cable then all routes associate with that NIC are pulled which leaves you with the routes learned by your DHCP NIC.

Casey

Thanks CAJALAT... that's the answer I was looking for. I didn't intend to make it difficult, it just seemed logical to me to use two NIC cards, 1 for each network. BTW, the second router that I referred to is the cable modem with 5 ethernet ports. A network guru I am not! Thanks again.