Thanks for replying, but no...i had already seen that website and many others at www.support.microsoft. The setting was just like that (like you said).
I received an email from another guy saying that it could be a MTU issue (PPPoE with ICS Requires MTU Setting Below 1492 on the ICS Clients (Q259783))...the problem is, THERE IS NO REFERENCE to such MTU setting in the client PC!! I found it in the host Pc (it was set to 1500, however, with that setting the host could browse the web with no trouble at all), and set it to 1,492...rebooted both pcs, and nothing changed.
What i will try next is delete a registry key in the host (as suggested by Fernando Kohan 23-Nov-2001): ICSlocaldomainname (mine has this data: "mshome.net"); and the Winsock2 key.
From Microsoft's support website (Q259783):
"In order to determine the proper MTU size, perform the following steps:
Determine the default gateway of the ICS server using IPCONFIG .
From a command prompt on a client, type PING -f -l . Start with an MTU size of 1,454.
If this fails with an error message indicating that it must be fragmented, decrease the MTU size and try again. Repeat this until the ping command succeeds."
The default gateway for this client pc is 198.168.0.1 (and the assigned ip for the client through DHCP is 192.168.0.2)--->so, no problems here.
The default gateway for the host pc is my isp's ip (200.45.xxx.xx), and then there's the 192.168.0.1 gateway and two more other gateways (and there's only two NICS on the host - i don't know why WinMe does that...under networkneighborhood in the host, when i installed the 2nd Nic it added two nics - one "realtek 8139 PCI" and the other "...BASED ON realtek 8139 PCI").
So, i tried "ping 192.168.0.1 -f -l 1,454"
and it worked...so i tried some other values, above and below 1,454
1,500
2,000
0,500
1,492
The ping command succeeded everytime...0% loss.
When i ping my pcs by the assigned name under the LAN:
C:\WINDOWS>ping COMPAQ
Pinging compaq.mshome.net <192.168.0.2> with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.2: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Ping statistics for 192.168.0.2:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
C:\WINDOWS>ping HPPAV
Pinging hppav.mshome.net <192.168.0.1> with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 0ms
