Hey, hope someone can help me.

There are 2 computers in my house, with a wired LAN connection. One is connected to the Internet with an ADSL connection, and the other accesses the Internet via Internet Connection Sharing. For years both computers have been able to share files and use the Internet without any fuss.

Now, suddenly, the client computer cannot connect to the Internet. The host computer can still access the Internet fine, but when the client PC tries to connect to the Net, the progress bar just moves extremely slowly and then just stops halfway. I've tried accessing different Web pages, with the same result.

The LAN connection is working fine as far as I can tell, since files transfer just as before. I've tried restarting both computers, disconnecting and reconnecting everything, repairing the connection, making a new connection through the Wizard, nothing seems to help. Both computers are free from malware as far as all my scans show.

The only difference from before that I have noticed is that in the Connection Status box on the client PC, the 'Received Packets' are the same or more than the 'Sent Packets', whereas before the problem started, the 'Sent Packets' always used to be noticeably more (and the 'received packets' used to be slower to pick up when the connection was first made, and now it is much faster). This is probably irrelevant, but I've included it just in case.

Both machines are using Windows XP Pro.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.