Networking and ICS Problem

I have a mini home network (2PCs) at home. It was working fine before this, but I really don't know what had happened, and now I am facing a problem.
Question:
1) Must the computer connecting to the internet have a static ip, or can it obtain ip automatically? (I have no DHCP, no DNS obviously)I have also made an observation that when I specify the IP for the ICS Host, the 2nd computer on the network can detect its presence on the network. When I reconfigure it to obtain an ip automatically, it can no longer detect the 1st PC (I did this as the microsoft help stated that computers with static ip won't be able to use static ip). I really need help here.
When I did specify an IP address on the first computer (2nd one obtain automatically), both computers could browse the network and gain access to each other's files - this was till I configured the 1st computer to obtain ip automatically).
2) Is it alright to set the ICS Client to obtain IP automatically (The LAN TCP/IP properties) - could you answer it according to your answer in question 1?
3)

2. RE: Networking and ICS Problem
lbyard Feb-01-02 06:57 PM
In response to message 0

The ICS host must have two adapters, one for the Internet connection (dial-up, network adapter for a cable MODEM, etc.) and one for the local network. The one going to the Internet can have static IP address, but most of them get their address automatically for the service provider’s DHCP server. When ICS is installed it assigns a static IP address to the instance of IP/TCP bound to the network adapter going to the local network. The default address is 192.168.0.1. ICS has a built-in DHCP server to provide IP addresses to ICS clients on the local network. If there is only one client, it usually assigns it an IP address of 192.168.0.2. It is possible to assign static, private IP addresses to the clients, but the ICS DHCP IP address scope has to be modified so it does not conflict with the static IP addresses, or it has to be disabled, or local, private IPs have to assigned that do not conflict with the DHCP server. Larry