Windows 7 - Network visibility - and Windows Firewall

Hi all

I've got an Asus P5W DH Deluxe mobo, which has dual Gigabit ethernet and 802.11g wireless onboard.

I'm using the wireless for my Internet connection - which works fine.

However, I also have a crossover cable plugged in to one of the ethernet cards, which I'm trying to connect to my laptop (Macbook) - so I can map a drive to transfer a large file over to it.

In Windows I've manually set up the LAN adapter and defined the IPv4 address: 192.168.1.2
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: blank

Then set up my Mac in a similar way (but using 192.168.1.3).

Tried pinging the PC from the Mac and received no reply. Figured it would be the Windows firewall...so switched that off. Still no reply.
I used to do this in XP without any problems at all, so there's been some networking change that's affecting this.

The network connection is defined as "Unknown" and I'm not able to change it - would this setting result in my not being able to even ping the box?

Any other ideas appreciated.

Miles

PS - I have also plugged in a NAS box using the same cable and connect TO that FROM my PC (mapping a drive) without any problems...so outbound network traffic appears OK.

Someone's just mentioned that I should try disabling IPv6 on the card...or perhaps look to enable it on the Macbook