Trouble with bridged network connection.

I've got a Windows 10 pc here connected via a wired connection and sometimes my friend comes over and we play games, also on a windows 10 pc.
Normally to give him internet access I put a network cable between my pc and his through my second ethernet port (the motherboard has 2 built it, one realtek and one intel) and then I bridge the 2 connections on my PC and for years this has worked just fine across windows 7 and 10 - we both had internet that worked perfectly.
Then the other month I updated windows as normal and after a reboot only my pc had internet but the other one did not and this has remained the case ever since.

I have tried various things on both machines such as reinstalling network drivers, rolling back to older drivers, resetting the connection, allowing windows to diagnose the connection and so on.
The problem can also vary, sometimes one or both pc's stick at the 'identifying' phase, other times there is a message about problems with the ip address (exact message I cant remember).
I also have a simple script that flushes dns, resets the ip etc and have run this on both machines. But when doing this a strange thing happens, if I run the script on the second pc then it regains internet access almost immediately - however the internet no longer works on my pc, the one which has the direct connection from the router. To fix this I simply have to disable the bridge, but then of course the second pc has no connection again.

I'm all out if ideas here, I've even set the ip manually on both machines and again this causes internet to function on the second pc, but not on mine, and sometimes the other way around.

Anybody know whats the problem?

Not really sorry, but it sounds like you may have a IP Address Conflict for some reason.

It would be easier just to use a simple switch (or Router as switch) and set up a standard LAN rather than do the direct link and bridge thing.

Kbird said:

Not really sorry, but it sounds like you may have a IP Address Conflict for some reason.

It would be easier just to use a simple switch (or Router as switch) and set up a standard LAN rather than do the direct link and bridge thing.

That would unfortunately require a lot of additional wiring which is not feasible, does anybody have any information on how to set the ip addresses manually for a bridged connection?

Like I said, it's worked perfectly this way for years until recently so there must be a solution.

silverz said:

That would unfortunately require a lot of additional wiring which is not feasible, does anybody have any information on how to set the ip addresses manually for a bridged connection?

Like I said, it's worked perfectly this way for years until recently so there must be a solution.

Why all the extra wiring ? you'd need to explain more .....

wall > Switch/Router >Laptop1
>Laptop2
>Laptop3
>Laptop4 etc each laptop just needs to be in the same Workgroup and on the same Subnet number

Kbird said:

Why all the extra wiring ? you'd need to explain more .....

wall > Switch/Router >Laptop1
>Laptop2
>Laptop3
>Laptop4 etc each laptop just needs to be in the same Workgroup and on the same Subnet number

Because it goes like this in my house...
Wall> router>Cable built into the wall passing through several rooms> my room> cable laid under the carpet> my pc.
I would need to drill holes in the wall, pull up the carpet, buy more cable etc and all for a friend that visits once a month.
And the fact that if I format both pc's i'd expect it to all go back to working properly like it always used to, but all that just seems like an over the top reaction to what is probably a basic networking problem/ip conflict.

To work this out we need from a CMD prompt the results of ipconfig /all from both pcs

silverz said:

That would unfortunately require a lot of additional wiring which is not feasible, does anybody have any information on how to set the ip addresses manually for a bridged connection?

Like I said, it's worked perfectly this way for years until recently so there must be a solution.

That doesn't make any sense why you would require any additional wiring (other than an extra Ethernet cable). You just use a cheap $10 hub and plug the cable from your friends machine into the hub (instead of your computer) and then run another cable from the hub into your computer.

silverz said:

That would unfortunately require a lot of additional wiring which is not feasible