How 2 Setup a simple ethernet connection from PC to MAC? HELP, gon 2 heck!

Question

just spent the LAST hour tryin to set it up and then two hours researchin WHY its not working..
I've done the search in Finder's Help Menu and apple doc web pages...apparently macbook's don't need a crossover cable and I have done this in the past...
there are no users setup on my macbook, just me the "admin"...
Window's sharing is turned on...
I have typed in the address under services list and typed that in a window in XP and it errors out.. WINDOWS cannot find \\192.169.11.18\admin, check the spelling and try again..
on the Mac Side when i go to sys preferences and then NETWORK, I click on Built-in Ethernet, it shows green and it says, Built-in Ethernet is currently active and has the IP addres 191.168.0.44, which doesn't match whats up above, should it?
ON the PC side, I go to View Network Connections and it does show a local area connection, status is lmited, and duration shows a timer countdown and speed shows 1.0Gbps... Activity shows Packets sent as 79 and recieved as 0 <-- this to me indicates they are connected right? theres something going on there isn't there?
I simply want to be able to access my macbook from the pc and vice versa..
Can anyone help or point me in the right direction pLEASE?
thanks in advance!!
oNe
p.s. I came across this post in my research.. it seems helpful but I need some clarification..
1. how do I change the IP addresses of both the PC and the Mac to match?
2. On the Mac side, HOW do i found out my nameofcomputer and the yourhomedirectoryname he refers to?
3. HOW do i get this to work? it shouldn't be this difficult correct?
here is the post
Make sure you have Windows file sharing turned on the Mac side. (Sys Prefs/Sharing). On the PC side you need to share a folder of some kind. I usually share the My Documents folder, and it should give an option to share as a different name. So I share it as mydocuments, or my_documents. If your concerned about security share it as my_documents$. People trying to get in won't think of the $ part so it will make it harder for them to get in.
Make sure both computers get an IP address, and also make sure their on the same subnet. If you have to, *give them both a manual IP address like 192.168.2.1 on the mac and 192.168.2.2 on the PC.*
I'm sure you probably don't care which side connects so you can either right click on My Computer and Map Network Drive then put *\\nameofcomputer\yourhomedirectorynameonmac (ie. \\ibook\michael\)* It will ask for a password, make sure you use the username/password on the Mac and not the PC. You may have to correct the username. UNIX is case sensitive so make sure the password is exact.
If you want to connect using the Mac, go to the "Go" menu in Finder and then down to "Connect to Server". Then put the following, smb://IPaddress/sharedfolder. (ie. smb://192.168.2.2/my_documents) It should ask for a username/password, make sure here that you use the PC username and password. Again, you may have to correct the username.

Answer 1

awesome link and page.. thanks..
but no dice... after using google, finally figured out how to ping each device..it failed on both ends..
so I can't ping the mac from the pc.. and I can't ping the PC from the mac..
again all I'm doing is putting in a cat 5 cable into the ethernet port on the macbook pro running 10.4 and the other end into the ethernet port on a PC running XP SP3
I have done this before with these same cables that i'm using now, though it was the same mac but a different PC..
any ideas?
oNe