I have a P4 2.8 with 512 of ram running xp pro. I also have a P3 650 with 512 Ram. I have a NIC in each one and a second one in the Main machine (P4) which is connected to the internet via cable broadband. I have these two machines linked via a crossover cable. Both machines can se eachother on the network but file transfers take forever and I can't access the internet on the P3 machine. I've spent many hours searching for andwers and all to no avail. If anyone has had this prob and resolved it please reply. feel free to reply if I can give you anymore details.

Thanks - Desperate !!

Is there any chance that someone you know can lend you a hub and a couple of standard CAT5 cables to see if that makes it quicker than using the crossover cable?

Are they 10Mbps network cards or 100Mbps?

If they are both 100Mbps cards, have you confirmed that they are actually set to run at 100Mbps? In other words, have you check the 'Link Speed' (or something like that) setting in the network card properties - sometimes, the Auto-Detect option doesn't detect it properly and the connection ends up being much slower than it ought to be.