If both computers have a network card, just get a crossover cable (Cat5), and manually assign each one an IP address. Congratulations, you have a LAN. You may have to jiggle some network settings, I'm still trying to remember back to when I used Windows.

As for the daemons, if you are using Windows, they are called services. As long as you have the services installed on your computer, all you have to do is make sure they are running. (Daemon is an evil Unix term.)