So, I've finally convinced my brother to install Warcraft III on his laptop. We don't have a physical network over here, so we plug our computers together with an ether-net cable. Our firewalls are off, and... Nothing. Its status on my end is "Connected", 100.0 Mbps, 177 sent (at time of post), 0 received (ever).

Is there any way to connect my XP desktop to his Vista laptop?

EDIT: We've hooked our computers up to a switch. Still nothing.

EDIT2: He's changed his workgroup to be the same as mine. I guess it should come as not surprise that nothing happened, and he's having trouble connecting to the internet. His computer does not show up on my list of computers, and vice versa. Still no packets received.

EDIT3: Gosh darnit. It's no use trying to troubleshoot a connection when the other side has apparently given up and unplugged the cable without saying so. No wonder I'm not receiving anything. What am I saying, we weren't receiving packets when it was connected. Now my bro can't connect to the internet, and, and, and...

EDIT4: We've given up. My bro restored his internet connection by disabling file sharing (which, to me, seems a bit odd). We were both looking forward to it, but... neither of us know what we're doing. If we try to continue on our own, it won't end well.