Internet connection sharing
 

This is giving me a headache. I've looked at guides and I can't figure out how to do this.

I've got a computer with a wireless network card and integrated ethernet NIC. Then I've got a second computer with nothing but an ethernet NIC. So, wanting to share files between the two I figured ICS was the best way to go; since my second computer doesn't have a wireless card and I don't want to have to buy one.

But I can't figure out how to do this. I've followed tutorials and none of them seem to work. I guess I want to have both computers connected by cable while one of them acts as the gateway since it has the wireless card. Someone please advise me on how to do this before my brain bleeds. It shouldn't be this difficult but so far it's not working.

What I've already tried is to enable ICS on the wireless network card from Network Connections. Yet for "Local Area Connection" it says network cable unplugged on both the host and the client.

Both computers are on Windows XP Pro.

I'm guessing you're using a standard ethernet cable for it. For connecting computer - computer, you'll need a crossover cable.

What's the difference? Right now it's the same kind of cable I use to connect the router to a computer. I figured that would work; since either end of the cable is the same.

This'll explain it all ~

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what I have. It only makes sense logically. If they are the same on either end then the port on the router and computer must be identical as well, which means the ports on either computer are identical; so the cable I have should be a crossover cable.

A crossover cable crosses the Rx and Tx wires such that Rx1 maps to Tx2 and Tx1 maps to Rx2. In a standard ethernet cable, Rx1 maps to Rx2 and Tx1 maps to Tx2.

Most modern NICs worth their snot performa cable autosense, and can determine if you have a crossover cable plugged into them or not. It won't matter what kind of cable you use.

Okay.

Still don't know how to share this internet.

Is there any third party software to do this? Windows is pretty retarded about it if you ask me. For example it automatically tries to assign my computer the IP 192.168.0.1; and fails if it can't. It won't even let me change which IP I want. 192.168.0.1 could be unavailable for a lot of reasons, including being the router's/modem's IP or not being in the configured DHCP range... There's got to be a better way to do this ::infomercial::

Double Post:
It turned out Roph was correct; I did need a crossover cable. I accidentally found one amongst all the many of cables we have around our house. I then created a network bridge between my Local Area Network and Wireless Network Connect in Network Connections. That seemed to do it. Internet Connection Sharing didn't seem to work at all, though. Kept giving me various errors.