[Dark Goob]

OK. I have a Windows XP box with a WIRED connection (ethernet) to the internet. I have a Mac laptop with no internet connection running OS X latest version. I want to share the internet connection from the XP box to the Mac over WiFi, but I'm having tons of trouble (naturally).

What I'm doing: I plug in a D-Link USB WiFi adapter to the PC and it recognizes properly. I follow all the instructions for creating an ad-hoc (computer-to-computer) connection over WiFi between the Mac and PC. The Mac connects to the PC successfully and receives an IP address (169.x.x.x variety). The Mac's airport icon is the computer-to-computer style one. Yet no websites come up. Pinging 192.168.0.1 does not work (that's the wireless connection's IP on the PC).

Look. I turned on Internet Connection Sharing on the PC's ethernet connection. It's on. What the hell am I doing wrong. I read every website on this subect that I could find (sharing internet over wireless on a PC) and nothing seems to work. What gives?

-=DG=-

[nikon123]

Originally Posted by Dark Goob

OK. I have a Windows XP box with a WIRED connection (ethernet) to the internet. I have a Mac laptop with no internet connection running OS X latest version. I want to share the internet connection from the XP box to the Mac over WiFi, but I'm having tons of trouble (naturally).

What I'm doing: I plug in a D-Link USB WiFi adapter to the PC and it recognizes properly. I follow all the instructions for creating an ad-hoc (computer-to-computer) connection over WiFi between the Mac and PC. The Mac connects to the PC successfully and receives an IP address (169.x.x.x variety). The Mac's airport icon is the computer-to-computer style one. Yet no websites come up. Pinging 192.168.0.1 does not work (that's the wireless connection's IP on the PC).

Look. I turned on Internet Connection Sharing on the PC's ethernet connection. It's on. What the hell am I doing wrong. I read every website on this subect that I could find (sharing internet over wireless on a PC) and nothing seems to work. What gives?

-=DG=-

a 169.xxx address isn't a real ip address. If a computer cant get an adress from dhcp it self assigns this. Might i suggest just getting a wireless router...

[ghporter]

Yep, you need a router. A wireless router does a few special things for you. First and foremost, it unloads managing your Internet connection from any computer. And it simplifies connecting anything and everything. It's much better than connection sharing.

And when you turned on ICS on the XP machine, did you restart it too? That's often a necessary step, even though most instructions don't bother to mention it. In a lot of cases, it's useful to restart an XP machine whenever you make any change, and this one is a doozy. Further, are you absolutely sure you set ICS to share via the USB wireless adapter? I'm not 100% certain it will see the adapter without help (as in explicitly selecting it).

And as nikon123 says, if you get a 169...address, you have NO address.

[Dark Goob]

Alright. First of all, I *know* a router would be the ideal solution. But because this is a computer at work, I _cannot_ use a router in this situation. My boss wouldn't go for it. But I can justify using the USB thing because we already have it.

So anyway. There is apparently no way to designate the WiFi connection as what you want to share your connection over when you select to do so. See, you have to right-click on the ethernet connection icon, get properties, go in there and say you want to share your connection "to other computers on the network." It doesn't let you specify _which_ other network. All the online guides don't say anything about specifying the WiFi connection in this step. They indicate that after you share your ethernet connection, then people connecting to your WiFi connection will see the internet gateway. Of course they're talking about Windows XP users connecting. And I don't have a Windows XP laptop or second XP box with WiFi to test this theory with.



So anyway. I'll try the restarting method -- I hadn't thought of that. Hopefully that's all it needs. but somehow I'm beginning to think that a Mac simply can't connect ad-hoc to a Windows XP computer and see its shared internet connection, since the XP box does not masquerade as a standard hotspot like a Mac can when it shares ITS connection. Right? QQ.

-=DG=-

[Dark Goob]

PS -- I *have* managed to get the Mac to get a 192.168.1.X address, but it still doesn't get any DNS services etc.

[ghporter]

I see the problem with the "ideal solution." Shifting gears now...

How did you get the Mac to get a 192... address? If it was manual, then it's possible that you could simply manually assign the gateway address (192.168.1.1 probably) and that could be all it takes. Alternately, you could assign the gateway address as the primary DNS address and hope the wireless router does what a lot of 'em do and plays DNS "proxy".

[Dark Goob]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

I see the problem with the "ideal solution." Shifting gears now...

How did you get the Mac to get a 192... address? If it was manual, then it's possible that you could simply manually assign the gateway address (192.168.1.1 probably) and that could be all it takes. Alternately, you could assign the gateway address as the primary DNS address and hope the wireless router does what a lot of 'em do and plays DNS "proxy".

I manually punched the 192.168.0.2 address, hoping that would work. I set the router to 192.168.0.1 (the Windows machine's IP that it gives itself for the wireless card). I set the DNS server to that as well. Didn't work. Doesn't work in DHCP. The Windows machines' ethernet is set to DHCP and I do not know how to ascertain what external DNS server address it is using, or else I would try punching that in.

I can't believe how lame Windows XP truly is. Does anyone have a solution for me, given my situation? Is there a way to make this work?

-=DG=-

[ghporter]

To get the data you need from the Windows machine, you can open a command prompt window and type "ipconfig /all" at the prompt (just like terminal, really). This will give you all the details for ALL the network adapters on that machine, so read carefully.

It sounds like your Windows machine isn't playing nice with DHCP for some reason. This could mean that the WiFi USB device isn't suitable for Internet Connection Sharing... Or that it's being stubborn-Windows does that sometimes.