Internet connection sharing is turned off. I know how to do that. Also note that the xp machine can not be used long term for this. It is not my machine and I normally do not have access to it. I tried bridging on it to see if that would solve my problem but if xp will not bridge win2k will not either.

Are you talking about ap mode mine does that in win2k but not in linux or xp.

It will not do ics. if it would I would have this problem.

Can not reboot using bridge 2.0. There is a cmd line work around for that but do not want to use untill I am sure bridging will work.

Another suggestion was offered me. Do you know if you can assign a dummy interface to windows. I know they do it all the time in linux but never heard of it in windows. can I get windows to assign an ip to a dummy?

You don't need to use Bridge 2.0 with Windows XP since Windows XP supports bridging. In Windows XP hold Ctrl and click on the two (or more) connections to bridge. Release Ctrl and then right click on any of the selected interfaces. Click the pop-up menu option to create a network bridge.

In Windows 2000 you should be able to use Bridge 2.0 with Internet Connection Sharing. Enable ICS on the un-bridged connection going to the Internet. When you enable ICS there should be a list box to select the connection allowed to share just below the check box. You can select any connection in the bridge and they will all be able to share the Internet.

You can add the Microsoft Loopback Adapter driver and have a dummy network interface. To do that double-click on "Add/Remove Hardware" in the Control Panel. After Windows attempts to detect new hardware, select "Add a new device" in the list. Click "Next". Choose "No, I want to select the hardware from a list". Click "Next". Select "Network adapters" in the list. Click "Next". Select "Microsoft" in the list of manufacturers on the left. In the right hand list of network adapters choose "Microsoft Loopback Adapter". It may be the only one in the list. Click "Next". It should show that it is adding the "Microsoft Loopback Adapter". Click "Next" to add the adapter. Click "Finish". Open the Windows Device Manager. Find the "Microsoft Loopback Adapter" under Network Adapters. Right click on "Microsoft Loopback Adapter". Click "Properties". Click the "Advanced" tab. Click "Network Address". Enter a MAC address that is not assigned to any other network interface on your network.

You will see another "Local Area Connection" in the connections folder and it should show the associated adapter in the properties as "Microsoft Loopback Adapter". Assign protocls and the IP address as with a normal network adapter.

You can uninstall the Microsoft Loopback Adapter in the Windows Device Manager if you later don't want it. Right click the Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Device Manager and then click "Uninstall".

I am on!!! still have some tweaking to do then I have setup my linux machines but I can get on with 8 comps like this. 4 wired and 4 wireless.
I still have to set up a dns farwarder but I have a dhcp server and proxy server. I need to change ftp setup on it. most of the time it works great but some ftp sites it will not let me download files from. Also need to setup a remote admin thing that way I can disconnect my mouse,keyboard and monitor. Man proxy is fast just tripled my download speed. Now I can start learning linux. do you know if you can setup vb6 studio inside wine. Thanks for the help. Hope fully the next set of questions will be about linux. need to research linux programs to replace win programs. Got to get some sleep set up all night working on this but now I a at a good stopping point.

I'm glad that you got it working. You've set up a more complicated system than I've ever attempted. Check the WINE site for compatibility information. If I remember correctly some of Visual Studio will work with WINE but not everything. Debugging might be a problem as that's something I'd be surprised to see WINE support.

I do all my Windows development work in a Windows XP virtual machine running inside Virtual Box. To do that really requires a dual-core or quad-core CPU and a lot of RAM. 4GB to 6GB works pretty well and 3GB is probably the bare minimum. My P4 3.2 GHz. HT machine with 2GB of RAM will run XP reasonably well but not exactly fast.

I was to tired to eplain earlier but I did not get on with the system we was working on. Thats the nice thing about having so many computors. I had a couple other comps set up and loaded a couple versions of windows win2kpro and win2k server I have advanced server here but I have never even found a guru that can set everything up on it. I setup windows dhcp on win2kpro and freeproxy server and got on that way. but this machine does not matter. As long as I can connect with my other machines I can learn about linux. I have every windows version from 0.97 to xp pro. Back when I thought it was worth it I had all the programing tools. But first I lost pearl then win 98 came out and I could not find pearl so I quit. I have still got c,c++ and vb5 and three vb6 versions. You know I hated all the command line stuff and problems of installing but now that it looks like I am going to get on with linux. I am actaully sort of pumped about downloading the source files and putting together a system that does what I want it to do instead of what everybody else thinks is right. Oh well let me get back to setting up my computor room and keep an eye out for my posts on how to get linux working.
I got ubuntu loaded but I need to load fc,a true debian system and suse. All those systems have stuff I like but also a lot of stuff I do not like. I will keep you updated on linux my way.