hi guys, please bear with me.

I have never installed a network before. I have never needed to so this is my very first try.

My first pc is running xp home with VIA Rhine2 fast ethernet adapter as its main internet connection through a single port router. According to the device manager i have another 2 network devices, one of which is always connected but i dont know to what as there are no ethernet cables plugged in at the moment.

My second pc has just a single network adapter, a SiS190 100/10 ethernet device.

Both NIC's work as i can plug them into the router and they connect to the internet fine. Like i already said though, i can only plug in one at a time.

So i unplugged the router and connected both computers via the cat 5 cable. I ran the setup a home or small office network wizard and am told that the network cable is unplugged. I tried on the 2nd pc and i get the same message. I chose to ignore the warning and ran the wizard anyway hoping that something would work but it didnt and i dont know why.

I did choose to connect to a network without internet acces as obviously the router was no longer connected.

1 - what am i to do to get this working?

2 - while its not working how can i cancel the network sharing so i can stay more secure?

Thanks. And sorry for my network noobishnes