thelost,

In order to connect two network cards together without an intervening hub, swithch, or router, you need a special network cable called a cross-over cable.  A regular network cable will not work.  It would also probably be a good idea to assign each computer a different ip address in the local, non-routable range.  For example 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2.  Finally you have to make sure that any firewalls that may be running are configured to allow local network traffic.  On any computer running Windows XP with SP1, disable the Windows XP firewall. It will not allow File and Printer Sharing. On computers running Windows XP with SP2, make sure that the Windows XP firewall has File and Printer Sharing checked off on the Exceptions tab. If you are running any third party firewalls, like those provided by such programs as Zone Alarm, Norton Internet Security, or McAfee Security Suite, make sure they are configured to allow local network traffic.

Steve

Try searching in Google for the phrase 'peer to peer network'. You can't just hook two computers together and expect to get a p2p network.

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/networks/page1514.cfm?CFID=22424932&CFTOKEN=68984923

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/p2pintro.mspx

http://www.computerworld.com/networkingtopics/networking/story/0,10801,69883,00.html