[gohand]

hi, I'm looking for a way to connect my laptop with my desktop to share a secure connection. here is the situation, both of them uses wireless to connect to the internet, I'm currently using the public wireless provided by the apartment. and there are other users on the network, which I tried to avoid setting up a shared folder or regular office connection traditionally. but what's available is that I can connect them physically with the eithernet cable(RJ45) is there a way that I can set them up so that its seamlessly connected as if its my own private LAN, while they still maintain a wireless connection to WAN. also, the desktop is on XP pro, labtop is on Vista, hope that'll still works, Thanks for any help.

[gohand]

sorry for double post, I've played around with the connection, here is what i've found, it seemed that I can actually see the pc on the network just by pluging in RJ45 cable, while I'm using 2 different apartment connections, such as in Desktop I used ApartmentA in laptop I used ApartmentB as wireless connection, but I can still see them in the Networks folder. now here is the problem, without setting up a shared folder, I cannot directly connect to the computer, I get to a point where it tells me to login to the computer, but when I used the correct User name and pass for the login, it said login uncesessful. or is there any special character I need to put in the login? It'll work as long as computers from outside the wireless connection doesn't see my shared folders. Thanks.

[Blind_Arrow]

there are 2 types of RJ45 (Cross over and Patch), you'll be needing a crossover cable

[CalcProgrammer1]

You'll need a shared folder on one of the PC's. Plug both together with Ethernet (crossover cable, but if they see each other with a normal cable, then it probably works too, modern network cards often can detect cable type), and then find the folder on the other PC.

[peterhuang913]

You need a crossover cable or a patch cable if you network chip supports crossover over patch.

[networkphoenix03]

cross over path cable is the solution.
make your own class b patch cable rj45 crossover.