As of two minutes ago, I finally resolved the PC networking problems that have plagued me all day. The crossover cable arrived today and I thought it would be a simple matter to network the desktop with my notebook. According to the Windows XP network connection wizard, this should be simple. It was -- to begin with...

I configured the network on the desktop and used the handy home network program on the XP CD to configure my notebook. The two computers were able to share files and printers. The next step was to configure Internet Sharing, which is still quite handy despite it being slow over dial-up connections. After several minutes of research I found out that AOL does not support this simple approach to network sharing.

I tore my hair out for awhile, mucking around with settings and reconfiguring things to no avail. At the same time I'd also managed to foul up something by shutting down processes before preparing to run a benchmarking program. This resulted in some ugly error messsages on start-up.

I managed to find a handy tool online called 'AnalogX' that acts as a proxy to allow limited internet sharing on home networks, including over AOL. So I downloaded this program and some patches, then tried to resolve the error message thing using the XP System Recovery option.

To cut a long story short, I went back and forth with the System Recovery feature until I realized it had removed some of the patches I'd downloaded. Bugger! I ended up undo-ing the restore, reinstalling AOL and then installing AnalogX. After that I was finally able to get internet connection sharing up and running, and both PCs are happily talking to each other.

As a result of this PC tomfoolery, just about every spare minute I have had today has been sucked away by this damn thing! Now that the problems seem to be resolved, I can finally take care of some household chores and if I'm very lucky, get some story editing done.