Hi, all!

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to throw this question out there, but I'll give it a shot. I'm setting up two PCs, and I've been having massive troubles getting a USB wireless dongle working. I have two Sony VAIOs (Windows XP, SP2) that I found second-hand, and since they will be in a location too far to connect by Ethernet (no, can't do patch panels here :p), I need to connect them by wireless. Easiest and cheapest way to do that at the moment is by using two USB wireless sticks that I've had for a while, but never used.

One of the computers is using a SMC-manufactured card, whereas the other is using a Belkin F5D7050. The box with the SMC card can see and authenticate with my router just fine, and has no problem obtaining a DHCP lease. The box with the Belkin, on the other hand, isn't so lucky. While it can see my router and associate with it, it will not obtain a DHCP-issued address. Worse, when I assign a static IP address to the NIC, it can ping the entire network and access the internet (meaning it can authenticate with the router), but no computer can ping to it UNLESS that computer pinged the computer that's pinging it first.

Confused? Well, so am I. Has anyone had this issue before? Is this just a sign of a bad card? (For the moment, I have it connected by Ethernet, as I haven't moved it yet. However, this will be a problem when I set it up in its new home later.)

Thanks!

-Carlos Nunez