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If you've done everything correctly, ICS should
be ready to go. Unfortunately, it doesn't really announce
itself or give you much information on how to work with it.
Where is this thing?
You access ICS' controls via the Internet Control panel.
When ICS is installed, you'll see the addition of a new Sharing
button on this Control Panel as shown below
Clicking on the Sharing button brings up the ICS Control
Panel. As you can see below, there's not a lot you can
do. No control of logging, no ability to open special ports,
no control over Client network access (other than to shut off
ICS), no control over ICS' DHCP server. (I suggest checking
the "Show Icon in Taskbar" box so that you'll be reminded
that ICS is running and be able to easily access its Control Panel.)
HELP!
Note the HELP button in the above screenshot. Clicking
on it will bring up ICS help. You may find some useful information
there, but I thought that most of it wasn't much help. The Client
machine setup information wasn't much help and was confusing because
it referred to the LINKLOCAL 169.254.X.X addresses, when ICS uses
the 192.168.0.X series of address for the LAN.
Fortunately, Microsoft has a few helpful articles in its Knowledge
Base that can help you figure out whether ICS has installed correctly.
In particular, Q236465
- Description of How ICS Appears in Network Properties
tells you what your Network Control Panel should look like after
you install ICS. For links to other MS Knowledge Base articles,
check the ICS Troubleshooting
page. SOHOinter.net also has a ICS
debugging page that tells you how to check ICS' install
logs.
Is
this thing on?
I know you're excited to get started sharing, so
go ahead and try your browser on your sharing Client computers.
If, however, things don't work, you may want to see if ICS installed
properly. Check for the following things on the computer where
you installed ICS.
If you check out the Network Control Panel,
you'll see some new additions:
a new Internet Connection Sharing adapter
copies of a new Internet Connection Sharing
protocol installed and bound to each of your Network adapters
ICS protocols Added
a copy of TCP/IP installed and bound to the
new Internet Connection Sharing adapter
the copy of TCP/IP that is bound to the adapter
that you selected to Connect to the Internet in the ICS
setup wizard will be marked with (Shared).
the copy of TCP/IP that is bound to the adapter
that you selected to Connect to your home network in the
ICS setup wizard will be marked with (Home).
TCP/IP modifications by ICS
Run winipcfg and you should find an ICSHARE
adapter replacing your cable modem NIC as shown below. You
should see the information assigned by your ISPs DHCP server.
If you don't, ICS isn't set up properly. You can try
clicking the Release then the Renew button to see if you can
get a DHCP lease, but you'll probably have to reinstall ICS
to get things working.
Finally, bring up the Network Control Panel
and check the Properties for the copy of TCP/IP that is bound
to your LAN NIC. It should be assigned an IP of 192.168.0.1
or 192.168.0.2, with subnet mask 255.255.255.0
If your network settings don't look like what is described above,
try uninstalling and reinstalling ICS.
Make sure you uninstall ICS via
the Add/Remove Control Panel and not just by deleting the ICS
adapters in the Network Control panel.If ICS
still doesn't work, you can try
this procedure if you're comfortable editing the Registry,
or you can try reinstalling Win98SE, then reinstalling ICS.
If after checking all this, you still can't access the Internet
from your other computers, you probably will need to check the
TCP/IP and Internet application settings for your Client computers.
Go to this next page to do
this.
