Is the DLink really just an access point or is it a Router? Are all three machines getting their IP addresses from the DLink if it's a Router and what are they? Can you ping each machine from the other? Can they each ping the DLink if it's a Router? Some things to start with.

the D-link is the router sorry shoulda included that up there. The machines are getting their IP address from the router. Its pretty routine sterotypical setup just the OSes are different as i said. Would it help if i was to dedicate the internal IP adresses as apposed to having them assigned by the router?

You need to confirm network connectivity of the tcp/ip protocol from the xp machine before you worry about any network browsing issues, they are really different animals. Make sure you can ping the routers internal IP address from the xp machine. I can give explicit details about how to do this if you need.

yeah, any explicit details are welcome. i think i did that already, but if u have a process, lets hear it. thanks.

oh and if anyone has any ideas about what trojan/virus it is thats killed the internet, lemme know. i've already deleted 3 .exe and their paths in the registry, of course, still no luck with restoring the internet.

OK, first let's see if your Internet connection is really dead. Since I don't know what your local IP address is let's start by opening a command prompt on the XP machine and type in ipconfig /all then in the reponse look for the ethernet adaptor and find values given for the IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and dns servers. Post back with those values and we'll continue.

ER...slight problem with doing that now cuz I'm not at the clients house. I will be there at 10:00 pm tonite which is roughly 9 1/2 hours from now. However, i did do that yesterday and while i dont remember the specific values, i know that the WinME laptop was assigned a valid internal IP address 192.168.0.100 i think. Of course, i dont remember if i checked the XP machine...you know how one problem just leads to another? Its frustrating .

But i do know that the XPpro machine is communicating with the Wap/Router b/c its connected to Ethernet port 2 on the router an the lil' green light is on there. the old Win98 machine is in Ethernet port 3 and its lil' green light is on as well. I think its safe to assume that they are all being assigned valid internal IP addresses. But then again, i might be wrong. I have some expierence with networking, especially since i have an 8 computer network at home with 2 home offices which i setup. It runs off a Linksys Router and a generic hub with a cable modem. At home, everything works since all the systems run 98SE except for one which runs XPHome and I have no problems.

But back to this client problem, im pretty sure the IP values etc are correct...ill know tonight for sure.

Well, I understand, but when things get screwy we cannot assume anything. The little green lites tell you you have layer 2 connectivity (hardware)for our PCs to work we also need layer 3 which is the layer our IP addressing appears at. By the way, I have seen many instances where green link lites were on, but cables or plugs were bad and connectivity was only partial, it depends on which of the 4 used pins are not connecting properly. So when you get there run the ipconfig command and get the numbers your machine actually has on it. It should be all the same as the ME machine except for the IP address itself. The IP address should be the same except for the last set of numbers which should be something like "192.168.0.101" if your memory was correct. If it's not, then that's a problem. Next if that looks ok test overall connectivity this way.
1) ping your own address. this tests the protocol stack on your own machine.
2) ping the internal address of your router. This is your default gateway retrieved from the ipconfig command.
3) ping the external address of the router. This is your public IP address given by your ISP.
4)ping the default gateway that your ISP has given you. This is the public IP address that is configured on your router as its default gateway.
5)ping each dns server retrieved from the ipconfig command
6)ping a known Internet host by name such as daniweb.com like this without quotes
"ping daniweb.com"
it should return "pinging daniweb.com" followed by the ip address of daniweb.com if dns is working.

If all this works then you have full connectivity to the Internet and something else on your machine is the problem. If the first step fails. Then your windows installation/configuration is screwed up or something else on your machine is preventing it. Sorry if I'm giving you more detail than you need, but I just can never trust to know what someone knows and what they don't.

Oookay thanks for the detail, the more, the merrier . Ill do this when i'm at the client and ill let you know what happened. My first priority is to to rid the XP machine of all its lil viruses, and its just a Spybot away so ill keep you posted thanks a mil!