Hey I have a weird problem with my pc. For weeks I had an ad hoc wifi network with my netbook at home for file sharing. However, it stopped working. I have reinstalled drivers, the pci card in the pc, even windows xp sp3. What it does is it will connect and says connected on my netbook, but the icon on my pc will show it is disconnected, then it will quickly connect again and then reconnect etc and so forth. I thought that it may be that the wifi card is defective, but when I installed a normal ethernet lan card in it's place I noticed something. Even with no cable plugged in the same thing happens here! It connects, reconnects etc and now it just says it is connected with limited connectivity. The other lan port is also unplugged, and it was unplugged the whole time when it did this with the ethernet lan card. What could be the problem?

An ad hoc network is a temporary connection between computers and devices used for a specific purpose, such as sharing documents during a meeting or playing multiple-player computer games. You can also temporarily share an Internet connection with other people on your ad hoc network, so those people don’t have to set up their own Internet connections. Ad hoc networks can only be wireless, so you must have a wireless network adapter installed in your computer to set up or join an ad hoc network.

Click to open Connect to a Network.

Click Set up a connection or network.

Click Set up an ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network, click Next, and then follow the steps in the wizard.

Notes
If one or more of the networked computers is joined to a domain, you need to have a user account on that computer to see and access shared items on it.

If the networked computers are not joined to a domain, but you want to require people to have a user account on your computer for access to shared items, turn on password protected sharing in Network and Sharing Center.

To turn on password protected sharing
Click to open Network and Sharing Center.

Under Sharing and Discovery, if password protected sharing is off, click the arrow button to expand the section, click Turn on password protected sharing, and then click Apply. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

An ad hoc network is automatically deleted after all users disconnect from the network or when the person who set up the network disconnects and goes out of range of the other users of the network, unless you choose to make it a permanent network when you create it.

If you share your Internet connection, Internet connection sharing (ICS) will be disabled if you disconnect from the ad hoc network, you create a new ad hoc network without disconnecting from the old ad hoc network for which you enabled ICS, or you log off and then log back on (without disconnecting from the ad hoc network).

If you set up an ad hoc network and share your Internet connection, and then someone logs on to the same computer by using Fast User Switching, the Internet connection will still be shared, even if you didn't intend to share it with that person.

I hope you all found this information useful and helpful.

Phillip