Need help with crossover cable networking

I've been trying to network my laptop to my desktop pc (both running windows xp). My laptop only communicates with my desktop pc whenever I use my gigabit NIC card. But when I try to use my 10/100 NIC card, my laptop doesn't seem to communicate with my desktop pc. Although, there is a connection enabled on my system tray (both on laptop and desktop pc). I assigned both my gigabit NIC card and 10/100 NIC card (the ones I used for my desktop pc) the IP address 192.168.0.1. And every time I hook up my 10/100 NIC card to my desktop pc, my laptop doesn't seem to recognize it. Whenever I ping the desktop pc from my laptop pc, the "Request timed out." message appears. The reason why I changed my gigabit NIC card to 10/100 is because the connection seems to be slow. Probably because my laptop's just using 10/100. Right now, I'm just trying to network these two computers using a crossover cable. I want to learn how to network them this way.

 

crossover

It should be real simple; just plug the crossover cable into both computers and thats it. No switch, hub, router etc... required.
Maybe thats yr problem in the first place? Trying to connect the two without using a crossover cable?

 

I am using a cat5 crossover cable. The first time I setup up my network, everything worked just fine. It was only when I changed my NIC card to a gigabit NIC card that I started encountering problems. When I installed my gigabit NIC card, I still was able to network my desktop pc and laptop together but the connection was very slow because I was using a cat5 crossover cable instead of a cat6. So, I decided to switch my NIC card back to the standard 10/100 NIC card. When I did this, that's when problems started pouring in. I can't even ping the other computer even if the LAN icon is enabled on the system tray. I've tried everything I could think of but nothing seemed to work. I even followed this article (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/qa/qa20030213.shtml) step by step but still didn't have any luck.

 

crossover

might u have the drivers messed up by now?
Any way to test the cable?
Any way to try a different cable?

 

My thoughts also.

Did you UNINSTALL one and restart Windows before you switched them ?

Different brands may well require different drivers.

And make sure you have drivers that are made for your OS. Some are multi-OS compatable and others are not. I found that out the hard, trouble causing way also.

BillyBob

 

Thank you guys so much! This is an awesome, brilliant forum. That did solve the problem. I updated my driver and now my two computers are communicating. Thanks a bunch!

Now, my only problem is how I can share my dial-up connection on both computers. I am able to set it up. I set my desktop as the Internet Host and my laptop is able to connect to the Internet from my desktop. But my problem now is that my internet connection gets disconnected every minute. I don't know now what's causing it to get disconnected. But when I try to connect my laptop to the internet using its own modem/connection, I am able to stay online for as long as I want. Any thoughts?

 

Glad to read that we could help. We sure try.

Glad to read that you have it working.

But, as to sharing the Internet connection, I myself cannot help. I do have three machines but they share nothing. Them and the Printer are all plugged into a Router.

BillyBob

 

dial up

Hi,

it may have to do with the dialup thinking it is inactive. There is a setting telling it to disconnect after X minutes of inactivity

 

Dial-up Prob

Hi Willem! I checked that setting you were talking about. And it's set to 20 mins.

I don't know why everytime I'm on the network and try to open up a browser, nothing seems to show on the page but a page that says detect setting. And whenever I hit refresh, it redials my connection. But when I'm not on the network, I can stay online for as long as I please. Any ideas? This computer I'm using is my internet host.

 

dialing

Hi gurl,

there is a setting in internet explorer, tools/internet options/connections

Its probably set to dial whenever a network is not present
it shd be set to always dial