How to set up 2 player Lan?

TerrorFirmer

Two machines. Both running Xp. Crossover cable.

All I get when I connect the 2 is something about limited access, or no ip address or something similar.

How exactly do I set it up so I can play 2 player games?

And I mean exactly. This is really annoying me so thanks for any help.

duridian

Are you absolutely 100% certain that it is a crossover cable that you have and not a patch cable. Patch cable would not allow communication between the pcs without some sort of ethernet hub in the middle. Or alternatively if it is a homemade crossover are the RJ45 connectors on the ends wired correctly. The fact that you are getting the "limited or no connectivity" message rather than the "a network cable is disconnected" message to me sounds like some of the wiring is wrong in your crossover.

[Edit] just re-read your message. You possibly have not given each of your pcs ethernet adapters an ip address.
(Assuming Win XP here) Go My Computer > My Network Places (in the panel on the left) > View Network Connections (in the panel on the left) > Right click 'Local Area Connection' and select 'Properties' > General Tab and then double click where it says 'Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)' > Tick 'Use the following IP address' for IP address enter 192.168.1.11, (just giving an example of a suitable IP address, there is actually a range of addresses you can use but just type it as above for now) when you do this 'Subnet mask' will automatically change to 255.255.255.0. Ok to everything and reboot.
Now do the same on machine 2 but use 192.168.1.12 as the IP address instead.
The machines should now see each other on the network.

One more point: when you are setting up the multiplayer game, - note the exact way to do this is very dependent on the particaular game but a general guideline is as follows: start one machine as a game server. Now to get the game on the other machine to see this you must tell it to look for a local game server not an internet server. Some games allow you to key the server's IP address straight in others will scan the LAN for a running server and ask you if this is the one you want. Lastly, you may need to adjust or disable firewall settings to get the game to work, but try the above first and see what happens.

Alvis

You must to manually assign IP addresses to each of them.

Try
192.168.0.1 for one comp
192.168.0.2 for the other

the subnet can be same on both of them.

Edit
Damn Duridian. You got there before me

TerrorFirmer

Yeah thanks guy, but almost the second I posted this I realised that I hadnt changed the tcp/ip settings.

Set them to 111.111.111.1 and 111.111.111.2

Thanks anyway!