>>>>At home, I have a cable connection. I never had any problem to hook the workstation to the net. However, I tried to do the same with several laptops and I never succeeded. My configuration on the workstation and all the laptops I have tried is the same. In the TCPIP panel, I only check Obtain an IP address automatically. Detect connection to network media is checked. I also entered my two DNS. That's it. I don't have anything else. However, the same doesn't work on the laptops. Whenever I run WINIPCFG, I can see that the subnet mask is not 255.255.255.0 but 255.255.0.0. The default gateway is empty the the IP address is not the same range as the workstation. There is something I can't see here but I guess it's pretty simple.
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>Rather than switching physical connections, why not just add a second NIC to the home workstation to server as a LAN, and either get a small hub or use a crossover cable to attach the laptop to the workstation, and have it provide ICS proxy or NAT? Even if your cable provider doesn't let you work with the ICS that comes with Win98SE, WinME or Win2K, or Proxy Server under NT 4.0, you can always use a product like WinGate to handle it transparently. I use the full commercial version; there's a freeware version for more limited environments like yours. www.deerfield.com

Well, this is only useful for me about once per 2 months. So, I can't invest on that right now. I don't mind switching cables once every two months for a few minutes to tranfer some stuff. That will be my only use.