Wireless network wierdness

[Thomas Covenant]

Hi everyone. I recently bought a used laptop, a Compaq Presario R3000 with a 2.8ghz P4, 512 mb of ram, and a Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP for $500. Did I get hurt? It also came with a $150 leather bag. But that's not why I'm here. Before I bought the laptop, my internet connection consisted of my broadband client being connected to my Cisco Systems firewall, which was then connected to my pc. This worked great. However, when I got the laptop, I decided to try something. I ran another cable from a port on my firewall to a port on my Linksys wireless router, but not the internet port, which wasn't in use at the time. Both computers are running XP Professional. Bingo, instant connection to the Internet for my laptop. I had to go to work right after this quickie experiment so I didnt know until the next morning that this was going to cause problems, nameley my Internet connection for my PC would only work a few minutes at a time but my laptop would continue to connect thru the wireless router to the Internet. Eventually, even my laptop couldn't connect to the Internet. I unplugged the wireless router from the firewall and my PC worked properly again. So I decided to try to connect another way. I ran a cable from another network connector on my pc to my wireless router, hoping that this would let me use Internet Connection Sharing to share with my laptop. The computers could see each other on the network but no connection sharing. In a fit of desperation I ran the network connection setup wizard on my pc and it knocked out my connection to my firewall, requiring a sysem restore. Up until this point, I had full sharing between the computers. All shares worked. Now, my laptop is connected to the wireless network but I can't see my pc , nor can my pc see my laptop in the workgroup. Both computers are on the same workgroup. I guess my basic question is, how do I connect the wireless router, firewall and my pc to get Internet Connection Sharing to work. Or does someone know why my first setup acted the way it did. By the way, can someone either explain what steps are taken by the Network Connection Wizard or point me to a link that will explain what the wizard does. Thanks for any help you may be able to give. I know this post is rambling and probably doesn't have most of the info needed but I can give any other info you may ask for.

 

[Thomas Covenant]

New development. I discovered that my driver for the network adapter that I now have connected from the wireless router to the pc had no driver installed. I reinstalled the driver and it now works, letting the 2 computers see each other and share files. However, activating Internet Connection Sharing still causes me to be cut off from my firewall and thus from the Internet. To recap my current configuration, my broadband client is connected to the Internet port on my firewall. The firewall is connecetd to one of the network ports on my desktop. The other port on my desktop is connected to the wireless router. The missing driver couldn't have caused the dropout problems because at the time that was happening, it wasn't being used. Again, I know these posts are a jumbled mess but if you think you may be able to help, please ask questions for clarification. Thanks.