Guy's I know there are a million and one other places I should go with these questions regarding networking in general, but, I love you guy's

Right, today I've had a few free hours and I planned to spend it learning about Windows networking. After my hardware let me down trying to assemble a dedicated firewall box with PFsense I've turned to setting up a lab for testing which consists of two notebooks connected by a parallel cable and running XP Pro SP3, but, as noobs go I can't understand some things...

My WAN is up and running as a wireless client connecting to the AP in standard DHCP fashion and the LAN is set to 192.168.0.1 on PC.1, and 192.168.0.2 on PC.2. WAN has ICS enabled and I have all the advanced services checked in the settings tab for WAN but PC.2 cannot connect to the interwebs???

Remote desktop is also a failure from PC.1 to PC.2 and visa-versa, but I can use VNC, and if I open a command line I can ping 192.168.0.2 so basic communication is working but I must have missed something.

Also, I can't understand why PC.2 will not show up in network places? , Both PC's are communicating and in the same workgroup, again I must have overlooked something???

Link-layer topology is also up and running as are all the Windows Services pointing to anything to do with networking ie. routing and remote access etc.

I have tried doing the normal 'setup new home or office network' selecting which is WAN and which is LAN and using a USB stick to add PC.2 to the network, but, failure...

Also-also, how to I use a communal folder between the two PC's, simple sharing is enabled but I can't see nor navigate to shared folders between PC's? I need to be able to use one folder as a temporary folder for both PC's as the work tword the same goal(running the same app)....

Dear Lord, such a ruddy noobcake I are, YELP!!!

Jeff Goldblum never had this trouble connecting to alien motherships

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Jeff Goldblum never had this trouble connecting to alien motherships

Yer, but I need network shares to defeat the band of inter-dimensional Red Lectroids from Planet 10

On PC2, do you have "Client for Microsoft Networks" and "File and Printer Sharing..." added to the network card?

http://compnetworking.about.co ... rkin1/ht/client4msnet.htm

Quote from arco :

On PC2, do you have "Client for Microsoft Networks" and "File and Printer Sharing..." added to the network card?

http://compnetworking.about.co ... rkin1/ht/client4msnet.htm

Yes

My problems are probably mental as one just never can remember when the good save was made to their long worked mmc database. I'll be honest, I have a problem and just can't stop playing with all them settings. The control is gargantuan and colossally epic in it's many many settings/filters and all. Yes I'm bored. MMC FTW!!!

Fact is, I have two cloned PC's same in their database thus same in their settings, so whatever is wrong in database setting is wrong in both LOL! ? .

I guarantee if I wipe both to default it will make all better but that is epically wrong because there has been nothing learnt, and there's no flippin' WAY I'm going back through and building a new mmc database.

I just don't understand the services that are active and run shares, how do they communicate and how do I test and query what services are working and for faults etc?...

Do a barrel roll, that outta fix it.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Do a barrel roll, that outta fix it.

Whatcha mean?

Sod faffing about with a direct link with a parallel cable..get a router and make life easy!...Parallel cables are SO 80's!!

Can you post the results of "ipconfig /all" from the systems please? In case you don't know how to copy the results (I assume you do, but better safe than sorry), highlight the text (right click -> Select All) then hit Enter and it'll be copied to clipboard. Then use the code tags to post the output. Remove WAN IP if required.