my network has 2 computers hooked up to a hub/switch (linksys etherfast 10/100, 5 port workgroup hub) my computer has winxp pro and the other has win 98, both are connected to the internet and work fine, yet both computers dont see eachother and when i try to ping a website or ip in command consol i get "request timed out"

is there any way i can fix this myself ?

Have you got some kind of Internet firewall software installed on either machine? Perhaps the Internet connection firewall in XP turned on or Norton's Anti Virus with Internet protection? These things will allow you Internet access and block everything else unless you configure differently.

well after checking the website for similar topic i was able to rid of all firewalls and most typical issues, i am now able to ping websites like yahoo.com on dos yet i when i ping cnn.com or personal pings i still get my "request timed out ". thinking it was only me i had friends try and ping personal ips and to no avail they couldnt either so now im not sure if it could be our ISP or if the ips i ping need a port number to match?

any ideas ?

Pinging web sites is not guaranteed. Many admins don't want their firewall to allow the ICMP protocol to pass at all, so when you ping them, they don't respond. This is to prevent denial of service attacks and certain types of discovery. By the way, looking at your original post you seem to have both computers directly connected to the Internet probably getting automatic IP addressing from your ISP. You will be hacked in no time if you don't have a firewall. I suggest you get a router in there fast. My preference is the little Linksys with 4 port switch.