In this tutorial, I will show you, step-by-step, how to establish a crossover networking from the perspective of two computers running Windows XP. The fundamental steps would apply to computers running Windows Vista and Windows 7, so this tutorial should work out fine (though you should try the wizard in Windows 7 first before resorting to this tutorial to form a crossover network). If you stumble across any complications while following this tutorial to setup a connection, please do not hesitate to post your queries at the bottom of this page.
(I have jestingly called this tutorial a “poor-man’s” networking as it only requires a cable to link up two computers. Please do not interpret it as a form of inferiority)
Crossover networking utilises the RJ-45 ports on both computers in order to facilitate the communication. In case you haven’t come across the RJ-45 port, it looks like this. Note that it is slightly larger that the conventional telephone port (aka RJ-11 port).
What you will need for crossover networking
1. A crossover cable
There are two types of Ethernet cables. The first one is the conventional ethernet cable, which has this type of wire end-point configuration (golden pin facing you, reading from left to right as per “1″ to “8″).
The second type is the crossover cable, which is what we need for this tutorial. The end-points are slightly different compared to the above, in that four of the wires have been crisscrossed on one end.
If you do not have a crossover cable handry, you can always make one on your own using the conventional ethernet cable. Label one of the ends as “XOVER”, while the other end as “STRGHTTHRU”. Using the same crossover wire diagram posted earlier, you can easily fiddle around with the wires yourself and create a crossover cable for yourself in no time (my first and only crossover cable was created using this method). Otherwise, if you want to purchase a crossover cable from a store instead, make sure the salesperson understands completely which type you need.
2. Two computers running Windows 98 and above
3. 20 minutes
If all goes well, the establishment of a crossover network should not take more than 20 minutes.
For the sake of simplicity, the two computers will be called DAD and MOM respectively. Let’s get going!
ON “DAD”
1. Right-click “My Computer”, click “Properties”
2. Click “Computer Name” Tab
3. Click “Change”
4. A window should pop-up. Specify a name for the computer.
5. Click “Workgroup” and specify a name. (We will call the computer DAD and the workgroup HOME)
6. Click OK
7. Click OK in the computer properties windows. Restart the computer if prompted.
Configuring IP
1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > Network Connections
2. Right-click on your LAN connection and click “Properties”
3. Under the heading “This connection uses the following items”, click “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
4. Click “Properties”
5. A new window should pop up, click “Alternate Configuration”
6. Click “User configured” radio button
7. Here, you can specify the address. For computer DAD , specify the IP as 192.168.0.2, subnet mask as 255.255.255.0, Default gateway as 192.168.0.1. Under “Preferred DNS Server”, enter the value “208.67.222.222″. As for “Alternate DNS Server”, enter the value “208.67.220.220″. These values are sourced from OpenDNS, which will enable the computer to understand the numerical address details of a website
8. Click “OK”
9. Click “OK” under the LAN connection properties.
You are done for computer DAD
ON “MOM“
1. Right-click “My Computer”, click “Properties”
2. Click “Computer Name” Tab
3. Click “Change”
4. A window should pop-up. Specify a name for the computer.
5. Click “Workgroup” and specify a name. (We will call the computer MOM and the workgroup HOME)
6. Click OK
7. Click OK in the computer properties windows.
(You may have to restart the computer. If you are prompted to, do so)
Configuring IP
1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > Network Connections
2. Right-click on your LAN connection and click “Properties”
3. Under the heading “This connection uses the following items”, click “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
4. Click “Properties”
5. A new window should pop up, click “Alternate Configuration”
6. Click “User configured” radio button
7. Here, you can specify the address. For computer MOM, specify the IP as 192.168.0.1, subnet mask as 255.255.255.0, Default gateway as 192.168.0.2. Under “Preferred DNS Server”, enter the value “208.67.222.222″. As for “Alternate DNS Server”, enter the value “208.67.220.220″. These values are sourced from OpenDNS, which will enable the computer to understand the numerical address details of a website
8. Click “OK”
9. Click “OK” under the LAN connection properties.
You are done for computer MOM
When the steps above are done correctly, the computers will automatically discover and connect to each other.
Internet Connection Sharing
1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > Network Connections
2. Right-click on your LAN connection and click “Properties”
3. A new window should pop up, click the “Sharing” tab
4. Tick the checkbox that lies next to the statement “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”
5. Select the crossover network in the network selections (this option may or may not appear on your computer)
6. Click “OK”Checking IP configuration
1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > Network Connections
2. Right-click on your wireless adaptor and click “Properties”
3. Under the heading “This connection uses the following items”, click “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
4. Click “Properties”
5. A new window should pop up, click the radio button ” Obtain an IP address automatically”
6. Click “OK” to save
Printer Sharing
1. Go to Start > Printers and Faxes
2. Right-click on the desired printer, click “Sharing…”
3. Click the radio button “Share this printer” and specify a name in the textbox
4. Click “OK” to save
Keywords: Crossover LAN, Cat5e, Windows XP, Crossover Ethernet, Computer-to-computer networking, Direct networking, Easy networking, Mobile Ad-hoc connection, Wireless networking, WiFi networking, Mum and Dad networking, Home networking, Cheap networking, Cross over, Poor-man’s, Poor man’s, Poor man
Hey, sorry for the late reply. Why can’t you install an alternative security suite on PC2 that is equally good?
It is possible to scan the hard drive on PC2 using the software installed on PC3, but my concern would be the removal part, where Windows XP on PC2 may prevent the removal of malware by PC3 because the particular virus resides in system folders.
Once again, sorry for the late reply.
I tried this and I think I got both computers to recognise that they were connected to a network, but I couldn’t go any further and move the data that I wanted to from one machine to another. Could you take your instructions a step or two futher to allow data transfer, ( in this case about 30 – 40 Gb of music files from my main computer to my laptop). I know there are other ways of effecting the transfer, but I would like to know how to do it the old fashioned way!
Mike.
Hey Mike
First you have to share the folder where you want to transfer the music from. This can be done by right-clicking the folder, click “Properties”. Click the tab “Sharing” and select to share the folder.
Right-click on “My Computer” of the machine where you want to transfer the music to, click “Map network drive”. Click browse to select the shared folder on the other computer and assign a network drive letter.
You are done from there
I am unable to process past a particular point in your very useful guide as on one computer there are no network connections to change the properties of. Would a fresh install be recommended?
Hi Thomas,
Specifically, are we talking about Windows XP here? Can you see the LAN icon in the Network and Connections panel?
I think it is time for me to review the whole guide again when I’ve got the time!
Jamus
I cannot see the LAN icon in the Network Connections panel. I am running windows XP on both computers. I have re-enabled all the network related processes and installed some drivers but it still refuses to appear. Could it be effected by my ‘PCI simple communications Controller’ is not installed? I can’t find the driver for that either. Basically I’ve got a recently bought Samsung N120 netbook and a 5+ year old Dell Dimension 2400 desktop computer that I want to connect so I can get internet (and thus steam) on my desktop computer. I know I could buy a wireless adapter but this way is cheaper. I followed your instructions fine on my netbook (and what well written and helpful instructions they are) but there are simply no icons in the network connection window on my desktop. Once I deleted everything related to networking on the desktop (because I ever imagined wanting to connect it to the internet) but I have had a fresh install since. And before you say that my desktop couldn’t run half the games on steam, I have whacked a decent graphics card and a gig of RAM in it. I think my best option (i.e most likely to work) is a fresh install as I am thinking now that I may have removed my network card prior to the fresh install… Thanks fgor your help – it is a great guide!
Specifically, you are referring to which computer? The Samsung N120 or the 5+ year old Dell desktop?
So… Just to summarise the connection route:
Internet < -> Samsung netbook < -> Dell laptop.
And you have answered my query above, thank you. Do you know what network card have you got? I don’t think ‘PCI simple communications Controller has a part in it.
Nice
Tell me more about the graphics card that you have whacked in. I am still using a three year old laptop with nVidia 7600 installed in it. Works fine for most un-hardcore games.
Waiting eagerly for your reply
Sorry for not making it clear, I have followed your instructions fine on the netbook, it is the desktop that is the problem. The graphics card it has is a GeForce FX 5500. It allows me to play UT2004, Morrowind, KOTOR and C&C Generals so I am happy. I bought it and the Gig of RAM off a friend who was getting a new PC for £15 or £20 ($34 or $45.40 NZD). I have a LAN party on Saturday so I thin my best bet is a fresh install. I’ve either deleted a service or driver or the computer is having problems recognizing the network card I have re-inserted. At least I think it is a network card although the ethernet conenctor is on the mainboard and the only connectors on the board are fr a telephone line (labeled thus). if you want I could upload the information files of both computers to my website. I fee a bit bad because this really isn’t the place (i.e it’s not a comment or problem with your guide). Anyway, gotta get in for my lecture
Do you know what’s the model number of your network card, and have you tried looking drivers for that?
Could try System Restore, perhaps?
There is no clue on the card itself as to it’s manufacturer or model. There are drivers on the Dell resources CD for ~a network adapter~ and it lists my computer model as using it but installing it does nothing. I don’t think I have had this card installed on this computer since before I did a fresh install so even if I kept all of my restore points, there wouldn’t be a useful one. I don’t think I have ever looked n the network connections before now as I have never attempted to connect it to any kind of network so I can’t say it whether it ever worked although I presume it must have when I first got it. Also, do you know what a file with the extension .MDM is? I have googled but I am mainly getting ”Mario Dash Map File’ but I know that that ias not what they are. I deleted the Dell partition of my hardrive and moved them all into the root directory of my hard drive. There are ones called ‘Mouse’, ‘Memory’ and ‘Parallel’ so I would assume they are some kind of driver…? Thanks for all your help!
Looks like such problem has been described before: http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/4800-network-connections-folder-empty.html
Under “Device Manager”, can you see any yellow exclamation marks?
(Right-Click My Computer –> Properties –> Device Manager)
If I make new connections, they show up but it only lets me use parallel and COM. When I use the wizard and select connection between two computers, it tries to use dial up or something. Unlike madtek also, I don’t have any network related devices appearing in the device manager. I don’t even have a section for network adapters whereas my netbook working fine has both it’s wired and wireless adapters/controllers listed. it would be nice not to have to do a fresh install but it looks like the best solution. The only thing I worry about are the files from the Dell partition as in previous fresh installs the partition has been left intact. The reason I removed it is that during the last install, Windows decided to give it a drive letter – C which has causes some minor problems.
Sorry to double post:
I meet the symptoms of ‘case 1′ on this Microsoft trouble shooting page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825826#Method1
But then it asks me to uninstall network adapters which aren’t there. I have followed most of the steps recommended in the thread you linked but they really have a different problem. I should have looked first anyway though so sorry
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5553536_file-extension-mdm.html
http://file-extension.net/seeker/file_extension_mdm
Dell Dimension 2400 has an integrated ethernet port, which means that it is not physically a PCI card plugged into the motherboard. Maybe you can try hunting for the latest drivers at the Intel website?
Thank you for your nice article, but can you clarify the bit about cables and Gigabit LAN ports. I am trying to connect two computers together, one with a Rampage II motherboard with two Gigabit LAN ports, the other one with a Gigabite GA-7VAXP motherboard with one LAN port. The manual does not give me the configuration of this one port, I guess it is 10/100. It uses a RealTek RTL8100BL LAN Controller. I am trying to figure out which cable to get. If I get the cross-over cable and it turns out that the one LAN port is 10/100/1000 rather than 10/100, will it still work? Please clarify why you state that for two 10/100/1000 LAN ports you do not need a cross over cable, and if you can still use a cross over cable.
In this case, it is best to stick with a crossover cable as one of the adaptors are not 10/100/1000 based.
If BOTH adaptors are 10/100/1000 types, then it is okay to use a normal cable.
Bro You Are A Legend i was trying to use tha stupid network wizard on windows for F*&@king Hours man couldnt figure it out started chain smoking.then came across this and Waluh!
I am using a crossover on two computers.
Can I daisychain more together to connect more computers ?
Daisychain-ing more than two computers is possible.
Personally, I have not tried this before, so I can’t really comment much about it. However, when you do try to form a second crossover link, be sure to assign a different IP address from the previous two computers.
If you want to make computer “DAD” to talk to computer “SECOND WIFE”, you may want to bridge the two connections on computer “MOM”.
Thank you for your input.
Would just be something to do for fun.
Would “DAD” be able to talk directly to the end of the daisychain or would it need to be passed down from keyboard to keyboard ?
And how do you know it is possible ?
Although I take your word for it.
Just wondering how you know since you never tried it.
Is there a website you could direct me to ?
I have been looking a bit and I haven’t found anywhere that addresses this.
As I said, through bridging of the two crossover networks, “DAD” should be able to talk to the computer on the very end.
I am guessing this is possible because the two ethernet adaptors on MUM (I’m assuming MUM is the central connection) operate independently. Hence, when two crossover networks are hooked up on MUM, there shouldn’t be a problem as long as there are no IP address conflicts. Bridging up of the adaptors should make the computers on both ends to talk to each other.
Sorry, but I am not sure where can I refer you to for further references.
Jamus
Will the above workaround be effective if you use a serial cable (serial port connector on both ends) instead of a crossover cable?
As far as I know, no. This is mainly because serial ports are not detectable as network adaptors, therefore if you do not have a network interface on the computers in the first place, you wouldn’t be able to form a crossover network using such method.
Having said so, there are ethernet-to-serial adaptors available on the market: http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/490402
However, I would advise installing a PCI Ethernet Card into the computer rather than following this method.
Jamus
I have a situation similar to what you describe above. I connect to the internet with a laptop through a usb wireless adapter which has a static IP address and ICS turned on. I want to connect a router to the Lan port of the laptop so that my other laptop can connect to the internet through it. I will connect an ATA to the router for telephone.
I assume that I need to connect the WAN side of the router to the Lan port of the laptop. Does that need to be a crossover cable? Also do you know what the IP settings on the Lan connection and router need to be?
If I have interpreted what you have said correctly…
Internet < -> Wireless Router < -> Laptop (via the USB wireless adaptor).
And this is what you would like to achieve:
Internet < -> Wireless Router < -> Laptop < -> Another Router < -> The Other Laptop (via LAN Connection).
Is that right?
What did you mean by ATA?
What I have right now is;
Internet Laptop (via the usb wireless adapter with ICS turned on)
What I am trying to achieve:
Internet Laptop (via usb adapter) wireless (and wired) router another laptop (via wireless to the router) and an Analog Telehone Adapter (ATA) wired to the router for voip telephone service.
I had the ATA working before without the router and the second laptop by connecting the ATA directly to the LAN connection of the primary laptop with a crossover cable.
What is different now is that my ISP is assigning a static IP to the primary laptop and that I would like to connect the router to the LAN connection.
BTW, the laptop usb wireless adapter IP is 192.168.1.170, subnet 255.255.255.0, default gateway 192.168.1.1
Sorry, but before we move on further, could you please confirm that the network illustration that I had provided earlier is correct? If that is largely incorrect of the situation, could you please provide a diagram that is more commensurable?
Jamus
Sorry, I had not noticed that the brackets in my response disappeared when i sent it. Here is a retry. i have represented the connections with — since my brackets seem to disappear:
What I have right now is;
Internet — Laptop (via the usb wireless adapter with ICS turned on)
What I am trying to achieve:
Internet — Laptop (via usb adapter) — wireless (and wired) router —- another laptop (via wireless to the router) and an Analog Telehone Adapter (ATA) wired to the router for voip telephone service.
How is the laptop connected wirelessly to the Internet? Is it connected directly to a transmission tower, similar to WiMAX? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
I am from New Zealand, and we haven’t had much exposure to high speed wireless Internet, so I do apologise for the naivety of the question.
Trying to copy data from old desktop ‘puter to newer desktop ‘puter.
Both run Windows XP, home ed. SP3
Both, independently, work fine over a CAT5-wired DSL modem.
Both have Network Connections/System/local area network running.
I did not create a new connection, using the existing LAN connections.
Did as instructed, got to the point where I assigned new workgroup names and
rebooted both machines.
Then, where you instruct:
1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > Network Connections
2. Right-click on your LAN connection and click “Properties”
3. A new window should pop up, click the “Sharing” tab
4. Tick the checkbox that lies next to the statement “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”…
I find the same panel as before, no sharing tab.
BTW, I haven’t yet linked the crossover cable between the computers – or I couldn’t be on the net reading thee direction. My Ethernet ports would be linked to each other, not the DSL modem. I was going to do that last. Then go back on line when I’m done.
No luck so far getting transfers going.
Thank you for your help.
It took me a while to figure out what’s happened, but anyways:
Symptom
The “sharing” tab is not available in the new windows that pops up.
The reason
There isn’t an Internet connection running on either of the computers when you were trying to share a non-existing Internet connection.
More importantly, the problem that we have here
It sounds like both of your computers have only one LAN port each, and that it is not possible to wire to both the DSL modem and to each other simultaneously. In other words, on one of the two computers, it needs to have 1) One connection to the other computer, and 2) One connection to the DSL modem.
I think before we proceed to link up the two computers according to the tutorial, we need to figure out how to deal with the problem first.
Suggestions
1) Get a PCI ethernet card and insert into one of the two computers. That way, you will have two LAN ports to deal with this problem
2) Get a router, which will connect to the router and the two computers. This will eliminate the need for a crossover network
3) Get two wireless USB adaptors, and pluck them into each of the two computers. That way, the crossover network will be formed via the ad hoc manner.
I am looking forward to your reply
Thank you very much for posting this. It helped me a lot
This was a snap to get started. IP addressing went great. Ping on each PC went well. However I couldn’t see my shares on either PC. It turned out to be the firewall! I’m using Zone Alarm by the way. Even though I added the network to the firewall exceptions, it was still blocking. I had to manually allow the IP addresses to go through. And make sure the windows firewall is turned off as it can turn itself back on when making changes like name and workgroup. So when you’re setting this up and can’t see other network shares, make sure you check your firewall and anti-virus logs to see if the IP addresses are still being blocked after your first effort.
My set-up is the wired LAN with crossover cable and I use wireless adapters to access the wireless access point in the building (free internet). When I set-up the wired LAN the OS (XP SP3) put priority on the wired LAN over the wireless and essentially throttled my wireless to zero whenever I accessed shares or did streaming audio or video and it didn’t matter which PC I was using at the time. I did put together a fix and hope this helps using dual adapters. Setting at 1 will make that LAN take priority over the other. Setting the other to 5 gave me a good balance of the two LANs. 100mb is good for streaming DVD but not HI-DEF.
Control Panel – Network Connections – Right Click on the 1st connection and go to Properties –
Scroll down to (TCP/IP) and click properties – Under the General tab Click Advanced –
Uncheck The Box Called Automatic Metric and Change the Interface Metric to 1 to Start Off – Click OK – OK – Close
Do the Same thing for the 2nd Connection Except Change the Interface Metric to 5. Adjust if needed.
I take back the statement about 10/100 LAN NOT being able to stream HI-DEF (720p). 100mbs is good enough for 720p (not sure about 1080p). I was in the middle of adjusting the Interface Metric (it was at 3 when I tried 720p streaming the first time). Tried it again last night and it worked great.
Thanks for the excellent posts there, PCMD