Please help with my networking nightmare

[Dan4]

I'm tring to get a really basic network up and running between my new laptop and an oldish PC I have kicking about. All I want to do is transfer my old files to the new laptop so I decided to buy a crossover ethernet cable. The problem is, the 2 computers can't 'see' eachother. I ran the network setup wizard on both machines, and manually assigned IP addresses in the 'properties' part of the network configuration, (don't know if I was supposed to do this), but nothing seems to help. Am I supposed to be able to see the drives from the old computer in explorer and so be able to transfer files? If so, it's not working! Does anybody have an ideas of what I could be doing wrong, or can anybody point me in the direction of some info on the web giving a detailed setp by step tutorial on how to do it? Most of the info I've come accros is very vague.

Could the problem be that the 2 network cards aren't compatible because of the age difference?

Thanks for any help

 

[Samstoned]

a short or quicky
same workgroup they must be on
if home must both be logged with same user and pass
if xp pro disable simple file shareing
start with one machine do
run /cmd c:\ipconfig /all see what the address is make note
do ping on other machine of that address
share one empty folder test 2 tabs sharing and security set add new user (admin,network)in both then remove remove all other users
refresh screens
do search here for more on subject lots of posts