Internet Connection Sharing: "system cannot find the file specified"

[Ben Liblit]

I am trying to enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) on a Windows XP
Home box. The connection in question is ethernet, ultimately out to
DSL. IP address, DNS, and other configuration information is fixed and
statically assigned.

If directly turn on sharing in the connection's Properties dialog, I
receive a "Network Connections" error dialog with the following text:

An error occurred while Internet Connection Sharing was being enabled.
The system cannot find the file specified.

The Network Setup Wizard does no better. It eventually reports that "An
error occurred during configuration of the network on this computer" and
suggests that I do things manually instead.

Things I have already tried:

- temporarily disabling the connection's firewall
- rebooting any number of times
- uninstalling the card's driver and setting up the connection again
completely from scratch
- running "sfc /scannow" to search for any missing system files

Box is current with all Microsoft patches and the connection works fine
from the box itself. I've hunted around using Google, but cannot find
any suggestions that have worked. Any more ideas?

 

[Ben Liblit]

Are you sharing to a wireless adapter by chance?

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "sharing *to*", but here's what
I've got:

desktop PC:
ethernet card --> dumb DSL modem --> ISP --> outside world
wireless card

laptop:
wireless card

I'm trying to turn on sharing of the desktop PC's ethernet interface so
that I can reach the Internet via my laptop. The general plan is to
use, say, 192.168.0.1 for the desktop wireless card and 192.168.0.2 for
the laptop wireless card. The laptop will be told that 192.168.0.1 is
its default gateway, while the desktop's default gateway will point out
along the DSL connection.

I've got this working great under Linux using a single, simple iptables
rule that effectively tells the desktop PC to do this routing between
the 192.168.0.x network and the outside world. In the Linux community,
at least, this approach is called "IP masquerading", because packets
that really came from the laptop masquerade as though they came from the
desktop's IP address. The desktop is responsible for remembering which
masqueraded packets it sent out so that it can send corresponding reply
packets back to the laptop later.

(By "dumb DSL modem" I mean a thing that offers only a single inside
ethernet connection. No wireless, no special routing, no DHCP service.)

 

[Ken Wickes [MSFT]]

Sorry about the terminology, I meant to ask if your adapter to the home
network was wireless, which it is.

The problem is I don't know exactly what causes this error. I'm starting to
pick up that it happens with wireless, which is why I asked. Right now the
only thing I can suggest it to see if you can get the two machine connected
successfullly (just to each other, not the Internet) via wireless before you
enable ICS.