Orac, it's a good question. I tried so many things I think I lost track a bit in my head, and also confused the 'puters with so many system restores, etc. What a blessing that facility is!!
Basically, and it seems obvious now,
[list=1][*]I restored both machines to known good system checkpoints. On each I went back to a point before I started screwing around with this.[*]uninstalled antivirus on both machines[*]deactivated firewall (Zone Alarm, only used on ICS host machine)[*]on D-Link's eventual advice, disabled (not uninstalled) ethernet on both machines[*]ditto, removed network bridge on both machines[*]re-started both machines[*]Installed wireless driver software in both machines, but did not re-start on the prompts.[*]Switched off both, inserted hardware and re-started to complete installation[*]used
this link to set up the ad hoc connection on both 'puters. (XP has a DHCP server in it, so auto IP adressing works, so you
can use Windows to configure the wireless network settings.)[*]Then used
this link to MS KB article 306126 to manually configure Internet Connection Sharing.[*]Then disabled "use to Windows Configure wireless network settings" so I could more readily control the D-Link hardware options through the D-Link utilities.[/list=1]
This summary makes it look so easy, but believe me, it wasn't. I think the problem was the AV software and Zone Alarm. The AV was silent and ZA prompted for info at various points, but according to the D-Link help people that did not necessarily configure it properly during the set-up process.
It's all still a bit flakey, though. I've had to re-boot the laptop partway through an internet browsing session, and at the moment, while I have Internet Connection Sharing working ok, I cannot make the 'puters see each other's drives, though I could earlier. The network must be basically sound to have ICS working, so sharing drives must be just a mouse click away somewhere.
Zone Alarm and encryption is OK though
Next step is to re-install antivirus - Trend Micro PC Cillin 2002.
At each successful step I have made a system restore point - helps no end when things go wrong. I imagine defrag will get a workoput later on.
Do Mac users have this angst????
Cheers
AA
Edited to insert items 4, 5 & 6