Networking Problem

Internet is a magnificent medium to find solutions for your PC problem. I got help from it on numerous occasions and I am really thankful to the technology for it. However, despite of asking many times on many forums and trying everything given on the internet, my networking experience has been a nightmare so far. In 2007 I first tried to connect two PCs through LAN wired router, both PCs were using windows XP and guess what, my first try was a success but it was a matter of time when I realised that it was not more than just beginner’s luck because since then I’ve tried countless times but it never happened again.

Now let me go into the detail. I’m using two P4 PCs with Windows XP professional, both have LAN built-in to the mother board. I have Broadband internet connection which can be used at one PC at a time. Both PCs can connect to the internet without any problem but when I try to connect them to each other, Ping request gives request denied. The only change since the first successful try I remember of is the use of Avast Antivirus, at that I time I had McAfee installed but I stopped avast antivirus and tried again with no success. Here is the list of things I did to setup networking on my computers.

1. All the wires are connected properly; I am sure about this because they both can connect to internet.
2. I ran the Setup for Home or small business netwrk in XP.
3. In PC-A I gave it IP address 192.168.10.1 subnetmask 255.255.255.0 and in PC-B I gave it IP address 192.168.10.2 subnet mask 255.255.255.0.
4. Enabled Netbios over TCP/IP
5. Disable firewall
6. Disabled avast antivirus
7. Workgroup of both PCs is MSHOME
8. Following services necessary for networking are running Server, Workstation and Computer Browser. (Please note that other services related must also be running because both PCs can connect to internet).
9. File sharing is on

With all these things done, I cannot still get even a ping reply. I did the same in 2008 but at that time I was able to ping the computers and could not share the files because I could not access the PCs and kept on getting Unreachable message. This time around I cannot even ping the computers.

Please please help me

Muhammad Ali

Which wire you are using because you have to use a cross wire for pc-to-pc network and straight wire for pc-tos-switch? So is wire is cross?