lost my network

hey folks.
I have 2 pc's with W98 they were networked together and everything worked just fine. one of them got a bunch of viri and the scan deleted 280 files........anywho I fdisked and reinstalled W98 on that pc. finally got all the software and hardware back to working EXCEPT the network. did all I know to get them networked together again but to no avail. if you click NW NH each computer sees the network name which is home and it sees itself but not the other computer. if I do a search for computer, it only brings up the one I'm searching on but not the other. I wanted to get this working again before I install the new router and share a DSL modem between the two
thanks in advance
:) Abby

let's take the simple solutions first.

1) Are the two computers in the same workgroup? You can see this under network properties.

2) What protocol are you using? If it is TCP/IP then both computers must be in the same subnet and have the first sets of numbers the same for the IP address.

wooooooooooo hooooooo thanks Beach Bum! I went to the other pc and found the subnet # and IP address.the newly formatted pc had obtain automatically checked. I checked assign. and put the numbers in, changing the last # on IP address to 2 instead of 1 it worked after a reboot.
kinda on the same subject if I play a WMP file from one pc to the other thru the network the playback is choppy. is that from the cable or some wrong setting on one or the other? either way thanks for jogging my memory on the IP and subnet #'s :)

thanks Beach Bum

no solution for you on the choopy playback. sounds like it is a bandwidth problem since it does work - or something taking up the cycles on the PC. check your cpu utilitization when that is happening and see if you are high, and what is using the cycles.