problem with wireless lan

i have bought an usb wireless card for my desktop(using windows xp) and i want to connect my laptop(also windows xp and also has wireless card). first i made all the nessesery setups for the wireless lan(i gave names passwords ect), after i gave ips like 10.10.0.200 and 10.10.0.201 and subnet 255.255.0.0 but still the computers cant find each other. why? any help? any site for explaining wireless lan step by step… P.S. there are no other wireless lans close to me and the two computers are 1 meter close.

make sure they both have the same network name.

so one computer isnt trying to conenc to "laptopnetwork1" while the other one connects to "networkhome" etc

i think that both of them are "mshome". but how do i change the network names, if i want?

you can specify the name of the network when you set up a network using the windows XP "add network" function.

Usually if you're only using the wireless thats the one that'll show up and windows has a 'Show Available Wireless Networks'

MSHOME is the Windows default workgroup. Do not confuse this with your Wireless Service Set Identifier, or SSID. To change your workgroup in XP+ computers, go to Control Panel :: System :: Computer Name and click the Change Workgroup button. You will need to restart afterwards. This must be changed on every computer as it is P2P based; you are not all connecting to one server that defines the workgroups of all connected computers.

To changed your Wireless' SSID, you must user a router configuration panel or change the setup if you're using a home built access point. This is what people seeing your wireless connection will view your network as.