Problem connecting two XP pc's with hub

Hi,

I am having a problem installing a small, simple network. The OS is XP Pro & Home, both NIC's and their drivers are installed and I'm getting connection lights on the hub. Both C:\ drives are shared and the firewall on A is disabled. I manually configured each nic with IP addresses myself and not using dhcp. I have an external USB DSL modem that I use for internet access. Computer A cannot ping the loopback address nor the IP I configured for itself, but can ping Computer B. Computer B pings the loopback address and it's NIC just fine but cannot ping Computer A. Now this is where I'm confused to what the problem is. I think their might be a conflict with my USB modem because Computer B cannot see Computer A's network when the USB Modem is plugged in. Computer A cannot see anything period. When I put back the USB modem and restart Computer B, I can't see Computer A. I'm not sure as to what is happening. Am I having an IP conflict somehow associated with using 2 NIC's? one for the USB modem and the other for a LAN? Please help.

 

What IP addresses did you give to each machine? Also, you may want to verify that each machine is connected to the hub correctly. Keep in mind that a hub is a passive device, they do not segment networks, they do not stop broadcasts, and your bandwidth is shared. They also do not provide any kind of security between your machines and the internet.

I would greatly recommend replacing the hub with a router of somesort (Linksys products are great for home networks). Not only would this provide a hardware firewall, but it will maintain full bandwidth to every port, and make it easier to share an ip address between multiple machines. Of course, you may not want to drop the money on it, so back to your original question. Let us know how you set up the IP addresses, and verify that TCP/IP and file sharing is enabled on both machines.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the fast reply. TCP file sharing is enabled and I'm using static IP's using automatic IP for the LAN card. I went with 192.168.1.1 & 192.168.1.2 and subnet of 255.255.255.0. I do see activity on the hubs when I try and browse but not sure if that means anything. My USB modem uses a 64.214.1.1 IP address, do you think that can be a problem? I'm not trying to share a DSL connection at this point..just to share files between the two. Also on the LAN nic I have the firewall disabled so I can access files on each machine since I was told to do that. Hope this sheds some light on my configuration.

 

Alright.. i have another question: Have you set up a workgroup for both machines to log into?

 

Yes, I created an account on each pc to access each other. Each account name is the computer name. I called the workgroup "mshome" on each pc also.

 

If they, your ISP, allows you more then one IP address, you could try Obtain an IP address Automatically on both computer.
I had 3 connected to a hub with dsl and worked fine.