Networking Client not installing

Hello AO Members,

LOL Leave it to the newbie to ask stupid question, but I've run out of ideas and have had enough of the people at HP treating me like I don't know how to operate a pc. First of I'll tell you what the setup is. I have a HP Pavilion ZD8000 notebook.Running Windows XP HOME :mad: .(Hating windows more every day) with SP2. I've downloaded all the updates I can think of for it and then took the trouble to track down all the updated drivers and installed them. Here's my headache I'm trying to network two pcs with windows xp home. I tried just plugging the Cat5 patch cable from pc to notebook. Nothing Happened. I changed computers and they detected each other. So I went back to the Local Area Connection and started to browse though the properties though all the machines. The only thing different that I've been able to detect different from the notebook to the other pcs is that it doesn't have Client for microsoft windows installed. Simple fix just install the client and be done with it right? wrong. It keeps giving me a error message in normal windows and safe mode. The error is: The dependancy service or group failed to start. Anyone have any ideas on what the problem could be or a solution.

Go to the event viewer and it will tell you which service is failing... Install that first. then it should install properly.

I tried to see what was failing but it said nothing was failing.