# Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) doesn't work on my Vista & XP computers



## birdsnest4 (Oct 30, 2007)

:4-dontkno
I can't get Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) to work between my new Vista computer (_host_) and my old XP computer (_client_). I have followed closely the ICS instruction provided by the Windows Help and Support website. However when trying to view a webpage on my _client_ computer, I get the message "Internet Explorer can not display the webpage". I can view the same webpage on the _host_ computer with no problem. Any ideas as to what I can try to resolve this issue? 

Also, there isn't any icon for connecting/disconnecting on the _client_ computer. Should there be? On my old network when I used ICS between my XP and 98 computer, there was an icon in the task bar of the 98 computer that provided connect/disconnect/status.

*Background*: My _client_ and _host_ computers are connected via an Ethernet LAN via a router. I have sucessfully transferred files between the two computers (both directions) and to my shared printer. My internet connection is a dial-up on the _host_ computer and also works fine from the that computer.


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## birdsnest4 (Oct 30, 2007)

I am disappointed that I received no help from anyone on this forum, but I have solved this problem. ICS now works between my Vista and my XP computers. The following article was very helpful as well as other articles. I do not know where I found this article and I have changed it slightly but here is essence of what he said:


_ As many IT Technicians know, networking different windows versions is absolute hell, i can speak from experience here.

Each OS adopts a slightly different method to networking; especially with the automation.

The only real way to ensure that everything works fine, is to manually configure each setting to ensure that the OS doesn't assign anything automatically, which is usually where the problem resides.

Follow this procedure to manually configure your network:

1.] View Network Connections
2.] Select the LAN network connection and open its properties.
3.] Open the properties TCP/IP connection
4.] Set the IP in this range: 192.168.0.? where ? = a valid integer between 1 and 255. 
5.] Keep the default setting for subnet mask.
6.] Set your Gateway for the main computer and put its IP address in the Default Gateway value.
7.] Put the IP address of the computer that is directly linked to the internet into the DNS server value

Repeat all steps on other computers ensuring that you change the IP addresses value by 1 or 2 etc.

Go to the advanced tab of the connection and enable ICS.

Note: you cannot enable ICS if you have bridge the selected connection with another. Also you can't set up your computer as an ICS server if it's not connected to the Internet or to a LAN. It also doesn't work if another computer is already acting as the Internet gateway for the LAN, running a DHCP server, or is using the IP address 192.168.0.1. _​
One important thing I did was to disable DHCP in my router and to set its address to 192.168.0.x (x can be any number not already used. Also, to make it work, I had to turn off ICS in the host, re-boot the host, turn on ICS in the host, and then re-boot both the host and client. After that, the Icon for the shared connection showed up in the clent's network connections and everything worked.

The following link also was very useful:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308006/EN-US/


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## fisko (Jan 27, 2008)

Well, after 10 hours of problems, your article helped me. thank you very very much. !!!!!!!

Fisko


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## Lead3 (Jun 14, 2006)

I'm sorry no one was able to help you here but thank you for posting your solution and helping someone else. I hope you will continue to be a part of the forum and assist others as you are able.
Paul


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