I have a Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium (it SUCKS):mad: and my brother has a Dell Dimension 310 with Windows XP Media Center Edition. His isn't connected to the internet, while mine is. He wants me to download stuff for him, then put it on his computer, but his doesn't even know it's connected. Yes, I plugged it into an active USB port. Anyone know how to solve this?:confused:

Hi flamingo1234

Not much info to go on, so I'll have to make some assumptions;
If you are trying to network with a USB cable, does it have a network adapter? I'm not sure that a regular USB cable plugged between 2 computers will create a network.
Even so, network drivers would need to be have been installed on his desktop.
Does your laptop recognise a connection to his desktop?

His desktop will be configured to network via ethernet (Cat-45). If you have Cat-45 plug on your laptop too, you can just connect the 2 with a crossover Cat-45 cable, which is different from a regular Cat-45 cable.

Burn the downloads to CD or use a flash drive.

I am assuming bot PCs have ethernet jacks? You need to go and buy a crossover cable and connect that cable to each of the ethernet jacks. This is a direct way to just put a wire to 2 pcs and have them connect. But it has to be a twisted pair crossover cable.
And both machine have to have their respective networks setup - for XP go through the Netork set up wizard in the Network conncetions category in control panel. Go through wizard clicking next when you get to last page when it asks whether to create a disk or anything, hust choose last option and click finish.

Your Vista network and sharing center needs to be set up as a private network and each PC has to share it's folders, just share the folders you want the other to see, example: Shared download folder


Your best option is to get a linksys ethernet switch which is the same process except the computers are connected to this switch instead of directly to each other and you use a twisted pair rj-45 cable, Not the Crossover twited pair rj-45 cables - with this option all the computer network thinggs still need to be configured on each machine


This is the basics for what you need to connect your computer to each other

Very easy to do just sounds like a lot, buy required cables, configure XP and Vista for Networks - You're there.

I got a wirless network set up he can go online now.