Trading software on internet sharing box. DCHP won't work?

[John Bowles <johnbowles@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I am running my trading software through a DSL high speed modem to a
Dlink switch which feeds 4 computers in the home. Two machines are
running Win 98 and two machines are running XP Home. Regarding file
sharing and accessing the internet, one of the XP machines has a problem
and the other does not have a problem (even though both machines are set
up exactly the same using DCHP). Both are set up the same way using the
networking wizard and when I go in and check all the and related
settings much the way you do in win98 they are set exactly the same as
best as I can see. I can go in and manually assign the ip addresses such
that I can get this problem XP Home machine to see the other computers
and be seen and thus get it to file share properly. However this does
not solve the problem of accessing the internet (it can't find the ISP).
I am not an expert on this stuff so I am out of things to try. I ran the
network diagnostics in verbose mode to get as much information as I can
after I applied the manual ip addresses but (with my limited expertise)
I don't find this helps me .

Question 1? Can a virus trigger this type of problem? A virus was found
once on this machine and it was healed using the AVG free version.

Question 2? Can anyone suggest some things to try before I take the
drastic step of reformatting and installing XP Corporate-Pro.

Question 3? Although it is good information for any trader these days
since at any time this could happen to my trading machine, I don't
really like asking this type of question on this list. Does anyone know
of an other list that may be better for this type of question?

Thanks for any help,

John Bowles.