Failing to connect 2 XP machines through a switch

There are 2 computers involved.

Computer x is a win xp pro machine with a wireless connection to a router with internet access and is working. It is also connected by ethernet cable to a switch.

Computer y is also a win xp pro machine but does not have a wireless card and thus is not connected to the wireless router. Like computer x it is connected through an ethernet cable to the same switch.

What I would like to do is to connect both machines through the switch so that files can be shared between machines and if possible an internet connection can be established for computer y.

So far this has not worked. I have followed all of the instructions I have found online to do this to no avail. The furthest I have gotten to succeeding is by creating an ip address on both machines through internet protocol (TCP/IP) properties. This has cleared up the little or no connectivity issue with the connection but I still cannot connect the machines. On computer x I can "see" both the machines in the workgroup folder but cannot access computer y. It hangs for a moment and then the message "computer is not accessable, you might not have permission to use" blah, blah, blah appears. On computer y in the same workgroup folder only computer y appears. I have turned on all file sharing, ran network wizard on both machines and rebooted several times, checked that a "0" is in the KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\restrictanonymous of both registries, and checked the network wizard log for errors, none found. Need help to fix. Thanks.

 

This is a pretty common problem so wondering why there is no answer to it here? In fact most places online that discuss networking along these lines either don't want to or can't help. I guess there is no way to connect 2 computers running XP through a simple ethernet switch. Wow, I didn't see that in the works.

 

I am not up on networking, the only advice I can give you is to search on google for Networking xp. Maybe there will be someone to come along who can answer your question. Good Luck!!

 

FWIW: if you know the IP of both machines and have enabled sharing on both machines and you have a common userid/password on both machines. It is pretty easy to share files on both machines. You have to enable share for the directories/drives that you wish to share.

map F: \\192.168.1.5\share1
should do it if your ip and share name are like the sample.

I do it all t he time and as long as the userid/password and share is on, no problems.

Rich