ICS Between Win XP Pro & Win98SE

I subscribed to the ADSL line and attached a DSL Ethernet modem to my WinXP computer (HOST) and tried to configure the ICS so that my 2nd computer (client) can share the internet log on. My network between these 2 computers are o.k. (we can see each other) but ICS does not work in this case. My host computer has 2 network cards (1 for the modem while the other for network). Despite the various ways of configuring, that Win98 PC can never browse the net.
Then I was advised to change the modem to USB connection and did the ICS configuration. This worked fairly well but I noticed that certain links that I tried clicking from the Win98 PC do not work at all (dead) while it works perfectly from the host computer.
Thought it could be the OS problem so I upgraded to WinME and have all its critical files updated including IE6 but the problems persisted.
But when accessing the Win98 PC from the WinXP host, it takes a LONG LONG time to show and sometimes hung. But it works well vice versa.
I suspected configuration problems and I would appreciate if you good guys could help me out?
Thanks.

 

If the two PCs can "see" each other, that eliminates a bunch of possiblilties.

If they can copy files to and from the other PC, that eliminates a bunch more.

If both the above are good, then two major possibilities
- the 98 PC wasn't configured quite right - maybe not using the internal LAN address of the host pc as it's gateway.
- the networking setup on the 98 PC is partly hosed. Happens quite a bit to 9X systems.

If the NIC setup on the 98 PC was correct, I'd try safe mode, removing all traces of networking including the NIC from device mangager, shutting down, removing the NIC, booting and shutting down again, reinstalling the NIC and then starting up and setting the network stuff up again. Do it by hand rather than using a network setup disk built by the XP system since they are only reliable on other XP PCs and to a lesser extent, on 2K PCs. Cause horrible problems at times with 9X (including ME).

I'd suggest not using USB for networking. For some reason it is often not reliable. Maybe in a few years but not today.

 

Thank you NEWT for your esteemed advice. I reconfigured the NIC on the W98 PC with its gateway to that of the XP PC and now net surfing is normal.
I later found there were a few sites that can never make the IE work normally, i.e. trying to log-in to Yahoo Games (the log-in screen can never appear and in the end came "website not found" error. It worked normally from the XP PC.
I even downloaded and install Sun java but to no avail. If luck is on my side, the log-in screen came in with just a click. Most of the time the error comes out.
Could this be a DNS error? How do I go about solving this problem. The XP PC is occupied by my wife over her literati tourneys and I have to spend my time watching the TV instead of doing some good job on my XP PC.
There are so much to learn on configurations.

 

When connected to a site (XP is working with the Yahoo games stuff so use it), get the IP address for the site. For instance, if I ping www.windowsbbs.com I get 64.246.42.33 so I can now totally bypass DNS for this site if I want.

Make a hosts file (plain text and no extension) or add to one if you have a good one a single line

64.246.42.33 www.windowsbbs.com WWW.WINDOWSBBS.COM (I used the two spelling variations I might want for completeness - plus the color and underlining was the forum software's doing).

If there is an entry in a hosts file, your PC won't check further but will use the address it finds to get to that site.

You will probably have a file named hosts.sam on both your PCs. It's a template and you can tweak & rename it or make your own. But you will want hosts in the same folder where you find the other one. Different locations for 9X/ME and NT.

Do this for any sites that cause you problems. Just add them to your hosts file. There is no practical limit I know of for the size of the file. I've used one with over 2000 entries without problems.