I don't use ICS myself, so I can't give you any help other than point to the MS
ICS troubleshooting page. There are many more articles on the MS website that could help.
Client machine's 'network neighbourhood properties' shows the following components installed:
Client for Microsoft Networks
Network card adapter
TCP/IP
File & printer sharing for Microsoft Networks.
That looks correct.
With host machine's firewall OFF, client machine can successfully ping any www address even with host machine Proxy Server switched off (wtf!?!), but no proper internet connectivity
That is also as it should be - ping uses ICMP, and is a seperate protocol to http. Ping does not use the proxy server setting in IE.
SD