WiFi, ICS, USB Adapter... don't know what's wrong

[uzichan]

I should first say I know very little about wireless networks.

I'm trying to cheaply setup an access point on one of my computers. I currently have 3 computers on a wired network all with XP SP2. I went and bought an airlink awll4030 wireless USB adapter hoping that would work. When I got home and read the manual it basically said that it just links something to an existing wireless network and that was it. I checked the manual online and that one said you could put it in ad-hoc mode, which I'm assuming would make it into an access point.

So I tried it out on two of my computers, and every time I tried to enable ICS on the "host" computer it kept telling me:
"Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) canot be enable due to an IP address conflict on the network. ICS requires the host be configured to use 192.168.0.1. Please ensure that no other client on the network is configured to use 192.168.0.1."

and

"Internet Connection Sharing cannot be enable. A LAN connection is already configured with the IP address that is required for automatic IP addressing."

When I emailed the company they told me to buy their brand access point instead. If I can manage it I'd really rather not because it is twice the price of the USB adapter I bought (I'm trying to do this on the cheap.) The only other advice I can find is to get a wireless router, but then wouldn't I have to buy new wireless cards for every computer as well as the wireless router?

Any help with trying to get this to work (or another possible option) would be greatly appreciated.

[bAdWaYz]

You might be able to patch something together with what you have but it would be unstable at best. For your sanity I would just get a wireless router with a built in switch. For example the linksysWRT54G is a wi-fi router but has a built in switch in the back. This way you could run the other computers wired as always but have the one wireless using that spiffy new USB wi-fi adapter.

[uzichan]

Originally Posted by bAdWaYz

This way you could run the other computers wired as always but have the one wireless using that spiffy new USB wi-fi adapter.

Well the computer that I have the USB adapter plugged into is actually going to stay wired as well. What I was wanting was the USB adapter to act like an access point so I could use a handheld device to access the internet.