Networking two computers

Hello. I'm having a problem networking two computers so I can then share internet access with them. I've tried both ICS and a proxy server, both have failed to allow access to the 2nd machine. I pretty sure the problem doesn't lie with ICS or the proxy server setting and think there's maybe a networking error because I can't ping the other system I'm networked two. Here's the set up I have, The XP home system is the system I want to be the main server, this is the system with internet access(DSL via USB modem), the system I'm linking it too is a Windows professional system. The two are linked by their NIC using a crossover cable. Both NIC are installed and fully working with the newest drivers. The computer with net access has it's NIC settings as 192.168.0.1, 255.255.255.0 as the subnet mask. The second computer has the settings 192.168.0.2, again 255.255.255.0 as the subnet mask and 192.168.0.1 as the gateway. Later on on the system I wanted to share the internet with I went into IE and set the LAN settings to 192.168.0.1 and set the port that the proxy server had displayed. Just wondered if anyone had any idea where I'm going wrong. Any help would be great.

 

With you having set up the network as you describe, if you cannot ping there is something fairly basic wrong. My guess would be your cable. Try a different network cable.

Also worth checking are the Network Cards connection settings. It may be that the auto-negotiation between the two NICs isn't working. Try setting both network cards manually at 10Mb/s Half-duplex. If that works, negotiation is the problem. You should be able to get them up to 100Mb/s full duplex so try that after you've got basic connection working.