Need help with connecting laptop to desktop using ethernet cable

So about 6 months ago my internet got shut off for a few days. I was still able to connect to an open wifi from my house. I then connected my laptop to my desktop using an ethernet cable. On the laptop all I had to do was go into the adapter properties and select to share the connection. Everything worked perfectly. Fast forward to now - the desktop refuses to connect to the laptop. Same open wifi, same laptop, same desktop, same ethernet cable, but I get no connection. It just says "identifying" forever and then sometimes the laptop gets an error about 2 computers with the same IP address. I tried the bridging method, it did not work. It shows I am both sending and receiving bytes on the desktop but it says "no network connection" and I can't do anything.... It's getting very frustrating to the point of kicking my beloved desktop to pieces. Can anyone help?

No solution but a question, are you using a Straight-through or Cross-over Ethernet cable? For direct connection you need the Cross-over. You can use a Switch with Straight-through cables.

To be honest I could not tell you if it's crossover or not. Don't know how to tell the difference between them lol. It is a Cat5e cable. I know that I spent 4-5 days with the same cable plugged in before and never had a problem. When I seen other posts about the cables though I even swapped which end was plugged in to what.. After not messing with it for a while I tried again and it connected. It said I had internet access on the desktop. Tried to access a website and boom.. It says no internet access on the browser.. I tried refreshing the page and it said it didnt get the DNS from the website. refreshed again to get no internet access. And it would go back and forth as I kept refreshing. same results for Facebook, Google, etc.. Then all the sudden it shows no internet access again on the adapter for the desktop.

How are you assigning IP Addresses to each machine and are is the WIFI still enabled and connected. If you have set static addresses are the wifi interface and the ethernet interface on different private subnets. What addresses are you actually using?

I would suggest disable the wifi and run a continuous ping between the laptop and desktop to check stability.

IF the ping doesn't work then you should also check the routing table which should show the ethernet link subnet and the interface and if the interface is actually up at layer 3.

The last test would be a traceroute to the desktop from the laptop, just to check the traffic is actually being routed to the desktop and not being routed to the wifi interface.

JustinC621 said:

To be honest I could not tell you if it's crossover or not. Don't know how to tell the difference between them lol. It is a Cat5e cable. I know that I spent 4-5 days with the same cable plugged in before and never had a problem. When I seen other posts about the cables though I even swapped which end was plugged in to what.. After not messing with it for a while I tried again and it connected. It said I had internet access on the desktop. Tried to access a website and boom.. It says no internet access on the browser.. I tried refreshing the page and it said it didnt get the DNS from the website. refreshed again to get no internet access. And it would go back and forth as I kept refreshing. same results for Facebook, Google, etc.. Then all the sudden it shows no internet access again on the adapter for the desktop.

Putting both ends of the cable, side-by-side, a Cross-Over Cable will have 3 wires in different position, i mean the order from left to right will be different on RJ 45 jack.
For to connect 2 PC Directly you need a Cross-Over cable, otherwise there will be problems , sometimes working, sometimes not.
A switch is the alternative to a Cross-Over Cable

Everything I can find online tells me that with newer computers/technology the crossover cable doesn't matter. They should automatically detect it's being hooked to another PC no matter the cable. Which is how it worked before. It does not make sense that I never had a problem doing it before.. All I did was plug it in and it worked.. Now no matter what I try it don't work. I never manually changed anything. Don't know why I'm getting the IP address error when I know the 2 computers don't have the same IP address. I give up anyway. Don't have time to run a hundred tests especially when I know nothing has changed from when I did it last time. Thanks anyway guys

There have been ALOT of changes in 6 months in Win10 , perhaps Internet Sharing is Bugged at the moment or you do have a duplicate IP address which will cause issues on the network , perhaps setting an IP address in the NIC Properties will help ? not sure it is years since I did this , but the IP address should be coming from your "Free" internet down the street, via DHCP, and perhaps they have changed policies? or are only allowing so many connections or they "know" you are using it and have blocked you perhaps???.

Most modern GB NICs do autosense the cable and don't need Crossover cables any longer , if you have an older 10/100 NIC it may not but may have an option of MDI-X in the properties.

KB

I've got my internet turned back on now. It was just for a quick fix until payday. And the open WiFi is actually from the cable company I go through. They have hotspots all over the place. Even though service is turned off I can still connect to their hotspots and then sign into my account on the pop up for the cable company as long as they haven't completely cancelled my account.. Same as I did last time. Which I know they didn't block it because that's how I was posting on here. I was using the laptop that was connected to their hotspot. And it showed I was getting 1.0gbps on both the laptop and on the desktop even though the desktop wouldn't actually connect to the internet. And I did manually change IP's and gateway last night as a last attempt but it did not work either. I will try hooking them both to router instead of directly to eachother if it ever happens again.. Thanks for the advice!!

alphanumeric said:

I do believe if both devices have a Gigabit network jack they will auto sense and you don't need a crossover cable. The fact that it worked before backs that up. One Gigabit on one end may be enough? If you have a router, even if it has no WAN connection, plugging both PC's into the LAN jacks will get them talking to each other. Assuming DHCP is enabled on the router. The other way to do it is to manually assign IP addresses and default gateway.

Why don't you choose cheap USB wireless card for your desktop?
Anyways, if you have Wifi connection on your laptop you can do it with following steps:
-Connect your laptop and desktop with the internet
-Jump to connections settings and then adapter settings
-Click on Wifi adapter and LAN adapter. Click on the right mouse button
-Select bridge connections.