I’ve been trying this for many hours… how to get a USB modem on a Vista computer to share its connection with my Eee.
I found that when I tried to connect through wire, a network cable linking the Vista PC and Eee directly, I could not connect when Vista was (a) trying to obtain the IP from the Eee or (b) using ICS on the cable connection. That is, to get the two to talk, I had to enable ICS’ing on the Wireless Connection so could not get the Internet anyway.
Then I tried it the other way around: I went into the connection which provides the internet, in my case at this moment a TATA Indicom stick, and in the network connection’s sharing properties (i.e. Control Panel > Network and Sharing > Manage network connections > TATA Indicom > (right-click) > Properties > Sharing tab) I enabled ‘Allow other network users to connect…’ and chose the Local Area Connection in the dropdown beneath. It told me that I would be using IP 192.168.0.1, which I was indifferent towards. And for maybe the 50th time, I connected PC and Eee and they spoke, and shared the net. It was wonderful.
Reviewing the options I have chosen on Vista:
<ul><li>Local Area Connection Properties > IPv4 Properties has ‘Use the following IP address’ enabled with IP address 192.168.0.1, subnet mask as 255.255.255.0, no gateway or DNS servers. The Sharing > ‘Allow other network users…’ is oddly not checked.</li><li>Wireless Network Connection Properties > IPv4 Properties does not have Sharing > ‘Allow other network users…’ enabled either.</li><li>TATA Indicom Properties > Sharing does have ‘Allow other network users…’ enabled and shows Home networking connection to be Local Area Connection.</li></ul>On the Eee I made sure I was not connected to any other networks.
Once this started working I found that:
<ul><li>it did not matter whether I first connected to the Internet or to the Eee;</li><li>to change the Home networking connection, I had to disconnect from the internet, open the internet connection’s sharing properties, disable ‘Allow other network users…’, click OK, wait an age for Vista to work (maybe 30s), reopen the sharing properties, re-enable ‘Allow other network users…’ and then chose the correct connection;</li><li>if I tried the same but mirroring Wireless for Local, in an attempt to get a shared connection over WLAN, I would slowly go mad and get nowhere, so it’s best to give up early and stick with the wire. Wires are our friends.
</li></ul>And, yes, even on holiday, I’m still playing with computers and wires.
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