Wifi hotspot and wired router?

If you open a command prompt and type ipconfig /all you will get information on all the active ethernet adapters on the windows 7 laptop - wireless and wired. Only the IPv4 addresses need to be considered.

In all probability, your ISP's router will give you an IP address (as a DHCP server) in the range 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.255 - usually reserving 192.168.0.1 for the router itself.

The linksys may also be giving out addresses by DHCP in the same range.

You need to set up the linksys to use addresses in a different range, for example 192.168.35.2 -192.168.35.255 with the linksys itself as 192.168.35.1 (the '35' can be anything between 1 and 255).

This way it will be unlikely that there will be any conflict between IP addresses that the linksys gives your XP and Win7 laptops network and the internet connection IP address. (but check with the hotel first what their IP range/ranges are, just in case!)

You will need to set up another work network (not homegroup - it would be best disabled since XP cannot use this type of network) for the wired connection on the Windows 7 laptop from the network and sharing centre - set up a new connection or network.

You will need to make all laptops members of the same workgroup - you could call this "Tournament" or some other relevant name other than the default "MSHOME" on XP or "WORKGROUP" on Windows 7.

Make a shared folder e.g. shared as "Pool" on each of the XP machines, and make sure that network file sharing is enabled on the XP machines.

You should not share anything on your windows 7 machine since it will be connected to a public network and the internet.

The linksys probably has a MAC address filter, which can be set to deny access to any PC except the laptops themselves. The MAC address also appears in the output of ipconfig /all ( it works the same in XP as in Windows 7) when run on each laptop.

Make sure that each of the \\XP-PC-name\Pool shares is visible by the windows 7 explorer and you should be ready to go.

Thanks for helping Fafhrd. I've followed your advice - much of it I was doing already - and unfortunately it's still the same. I have access to the XP Laptops but no internet (I just try and launch google) even though network and sharing centre reports that my wireless network is connected and has internet. If I disable the ethernet adapter to the linksys I immediately get internet access and if I enable it I lose internet. Here's what I've got now:

The sky router was set up as follows:
IP - 192.168.0.1
Subnet - 255.255.255.0
DHCP server - yes
IP range - 192.168.0.2 to 200 (I changed it to end at 34)

The linksys was set up as follows:
IP - 192.168.1.1 (I changed it to 192.168.35.1)
Subnet - 255.255.255.0
DHCP server - yes
IP range - 192.168.1.64 to 191 (changed to 192.168.35.64 - 191)

Homegroup was already disabled and I had set up a workgroup, which is not the default name. I've got a shared folder on each of the XP laptops and I can see it from Win7.

I've attached a copy of my ipconfig /all results and screen pics of network and sharing centre and my network adapters.

Can you think of anything else I can try?

Everything appears correct, I think, with a couple of minor caveats, and the work network seems to be working properly, which is the bit I would worry about, mixing XP and 7, which can be difficult, so, congratulations so far...

The couple of minor caveats are that you can disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP for your wireless adapter - you do not need network sharing features over the internet connection - and that the wireless internet connection should be set to a PUBLIC network - both of these for security reasons. This probably does not apply at home, where you are behind your SKY router, but may be advisable on hotel hotspots.

Your local area connection shows a second default gateway address of 0.0.0.0 - a loopback address -is this a remnant from your bridging attempt? Best to remove it.


Which leaves the question of why the local wired network is overriding the wireless internet. There are a few things to try.

IPv6:

In all likelihood, the only features using IPv6 are the network discovery and Link-Layer Topology Discovery features of Windows 7 - they are probably not used for either internet (checkout Test your IPv6. and IPv6 test - IPv6/4 connectivity and speed test) and certainly not for your wired network, so step-by-step try disabling them, first from the wired network, then from your wireless. You could run ipconfig /all at each step to see what is going on. (Generally with Windows 7 you do not have to restart the network each time since the changes register immediately, I don't think XP was like that.)

That is, on the local area connections properties, uncheck all except Client for Microsoft Networks, File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks (if present), and Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4). On the wireless connection, just leave Client for Microsoft Networks, and Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4). This gives you "barebones" TCP/IPv4 networking, which may be rather faster in operation. (you could also prune the TCP/IP properties on the XP laptops)

There are also the "virtual ethernet adapters" - probably best to leave them alone - although they have "Chocolate Teapot" status in my opinion.

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection 2:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-24-D6-5C-B3-1F
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter isatap.{71ADD60F-35F8-4186-B63D-D5FF04DC827E}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter isatap.domain_not_set.invalid:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : domain_not_set.invalid
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #2

These are present as hidden devices in device manager and would only be used for VPNs or remote connections.

Encryption:

Temporarily, try to disable the encryption on the SKY broadband router - so the internet is unsecured, like a public hotspot, and see if there is any difference. I guess that you probably use WPA2-Personal at home. Windows 7 handles this differently from other OSs, I think, to the extent that some older routers can only use WEP to connect, whereas i-pad, i-phones etc and XP and linux have no problem with WPA2 on these devices.

The reason is that the encryption presents a delay to your system so that the wired network always connects first. It may be necessary to disable then re-enable your wired local connection after the internet connection has been made.

One other point about encryption -Windows 7 uses 128-bit encryption for file sharing connections as standard:

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network and Sharing Center\Advanced sharing settings - File sharing connections

You could reduce the encryption from the recommended 128-bit to 40- or 56-bit, although this is probably not an issue.

netsh:

You may like to run the command to show the full wireless information from the command prompt, when the internet is connected and when there is no internet connection:

netsh wlan show all


Perhaps someone else has some further suggestions to try?

Sounds like good advice from the expert colleague.

OK Windows 7 is dumber than I thought possible. I don't really understand why it can't handle 2 separate networks, on different interfaces if there are different IP address ranges supplied by different DHCP servers. Perhaps it is another "security" feature.

One way I know it can have 2 networks is when Internet Connection Sharing is enabled:

Here is Severedsolo's tutorial https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...ng-enable.html

You could utilize ICS - basically by using your windows 7 as a NAT router, and just setting the linksys as a dumb switch.

This way your wireless internet connection would be routed to the wired interface, which would itself act as the default gateway and DHCP server for the network.

On your linksys, you would need to disable the DHCP server and probably the firewall and NAT features.

It's ages since I've done this and then it was only XP, so I'm a bit rusty here, but considering what you are doing I don't think it should hit performance on any of the machines.

There might be a Virtual PC solution:

Another way could be to run XP Mode on the windows 7 laptop with exclusive pass through on the wired internet interface to the virtual machine. I described this for someone else here - the bottom right hand window of the second image I posted shows the virtual PC networking:

XPMode-App in seamless mode doesn't find path to mapped drive

Thus the linksys would talk only to XP machines real and virtual, and your Windows 7 would effectively be the sandbox, with the internet on the outside, and the XP lan in the virtual machine. It should still be possible to pass data between the VM and the host.