sry its been a while. there are no firewalls on the computers but there is one built in the router (linksys befsr41). all computers are using dhcp and all obtain addresses automatically. the problem is that for one computer, there are two types of connections and the computer thinks that i want to use both (one to connect to the internet and one to connect to the network) but i only want to use one (to connect to the internet AND the network). i am doing this by the use of the router so that a connection to the internet and the network are shared on one connection. the two connections are firewire and lan and the lan is the one i want to connect with. however when i run the network wizard i only get the option to use one for either internet and the other for networking. hope this helps a bit more. if not i can try to explain again (not the best to explain this cause i dont know what is happening myself :| )