Wireless networking
 

I've got a laptop with 802.11b wi-fi card running XP pro and a desktop with 802.11a/b/g card running XP home. How would I go about connecting these together? Is it possible to do it without using any other devices (such as wireless router etc)?

you should be able to sonfigure them both in adhoc mode and get them to work...
I have a router and have never tried direct connections so someone else my be better able to help

yeah, go into the config screen for each card and set 'em for ad hoc and set 'em both to the same channel. Should work fine. Don't forget to share your drives.

How exactly would you go about setting one up? I have absolutely no idea. I tried setting the cards to the same channel, but the card in my laptop doesn't appear to have a channel selector. However, it will happily start transmitting data to nothing in particular. The 802.11g card on the other hand won't even transmit and i cannot get either computer to find the other one. I ran the network setup identically on both computers, only problem being that the 802.11g card would not initialise

if the g card isn't initializing then you need to reinstall it, because until you get it working you won't be able to network.

what brand cards do you have?

Ok got the g card initialised. The option was buried in the config menu somewhere. The G card is a prism, while the b card is intel i think as my laptop is a centrino. Now how do i get them to talk to each other?

you need to open the wifi config utility on each machine. Set them both to "ad hoc" (this is sometimes called "peer-to-peer" depending on the card). Set them both to the same channel. Make sure you have the file/printer sharing client installed on both machines. Make sure at least one drive or directory is shared on each machine. Watch the status monitor in the wifi config utility on the machines - they should start talking to each other. Once this happens, go into network neighborhood and look for the other computer.

I got them talking to each other. I figured this out as when i turn one off, the other gets a bubble saying that somethings changed. Where do i get the file sharing utility? Is it already installed if folders in windows explorer have an option to share them? Also where do i get network neighbourhood from? My desktop has network places, but my laptop has nothing