Vista + XP = no internet or networking?

[Sovereign]

I have a problem. The university provides 4x100Mbps ports to each room in my building, but only lets us use two for some stupid reason. One for me, one for my roommate. So how do I hook up my laptop AND desktop at the same time? Router! you say. Except they caught the guy down the hall and confiscated it. So, because I have a dual-Gigabit motherboard in my desktop (K8N Diamond Plus), I decided to hook my laptop to my desktop's unused port and connect through my desktop.

Ever since I upgraded my laptop to Vista, however, I've had problems. My laptop sometimes shows "local access only" and other times "local and internet." Most of the time it's just Local Only. I have the actual internet connection on my desktop shared. Is there something that someone happens to know about Vista that might help me? The "auto-resolve problem" thing can't fix it and neither can I!

[Tech_Greek]

I have a problem. The university provides 4x100Mbps ports to each room in my building, but only lets us use two for some stupid reason. One for me, one for my roommate. So how do I hook up my laptop AND desktop at the same time? Router! you say. Except they caught the guy down the hall and confiscated it. So, because I have a dual-Gigabit motherboard in my desktop (K8N Diamond Plus), I decided to hook my laptop to my desktop's unused port and connect through my desktop.

Ever since I upgraded my laptop to Vista, however, I've had problems. My laptop sometimes shows "local access only" and other times "local and internet." Most of the time it's just Local Only. I have the actual internet connection on my desktop shared. Is there something that someone happens to know about Vista that might help me? The "auto-resolve problem" thing can't fix it and neither can I!

Remember the Right Click > Run As Admin trick is your FRIEND in Vista.

Anytime you get kicked off, simply run CMD as Administrator and ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew

If it keeps doing it you might want to permantly assign an IP address to it...

As far as routers in dorms, that's to prevent WiFi...another way I could see you beating that it's almost impossible as they'll see a new gateway on the network and immediatly grab it.

[Sovereign]

I turned UAC off. I'm not "kicked off," I'm "locked out." No matter what I do, the Vista machine is denied access to the XP machine.