simple crossover connection dont wanna work

[sittas87]

Hey Guys
in a nutsell.Ive connected two household desktop machines running windows xp. Ive networked the two machine with a crossover gave them IP addresses ie 192.9.200.20 and 192.9.200.21(their random)Both link speeds are the same 10mbps(full)Ive changed it to different links speeds also.Anyways Ive disabled all firewalls.The thing is theres no access from one machine to the other.i get packets send and received,I can ping the addresses successfully but can access them.
Wot do I do wrong,Any ideas
thanks in advance

[zeroth]

sittas87,

Have you set up sharing on your files? You also need to do that with the printers.

zeroth

[sittas87]

HI
yes I have as for the printer i dont want to share it in actuall fact I dont have a printer installed.not a prob though.
heres what Ive done so far
-file sharing is on (I especially shared my pictures gave full rights to no avail)
-same sp(sp3)
-like i said I can ping (no packets lost)
-changed Ip addresess
-changed link speeds
-disabled all firewalls

Im thinking it can be the NIC being greedy you think thats a way to go??

[zeroth]

I've seen systems that wouldn't do global file sharing on a routed network...may be the same peer to peer. Try sharing a single folder as a control. If you can ping you can talk...it's got to be something simple...

[sittas87]

thats my motive when I struggle "try the simple fix first" .ironicly I always do it last. did just about everything.Im forced to try a new NIC as I strongly suspect the new installed NIC (second hand though)

[zeroth]

Is there any chance you have norton's on either computer? Since it comes with every new machine, sometimes even when you don't activate it remnants can prevent computers from communicating -

If you suspect that might be the case, there are programs out there that will COMPLETELY remove it and I would try that before giving up on the NIC - I just don't see how that would cause this issue.

zeroth

[sittas87]

I hear what youre saying. however theres no Norton installed in fact AVG is installed and Ive disabled it temporarily. reason why I think towards NIC is my IT manager took it out of a work pc for some reason. I do have another one to try though

strange thing is i deal with these things all the time but cant see what im missing

thanks for all replies. still open for suggestions

[sittas87]

thanks for youre suggestions zeroth. turned out it was the NIC.
cheers