Ah, Friday! and I get off work at 12:30 to boot! I got my friends network talking last night. One computer was giving an exception error when the other tried to access it. The network cables were OK, as I was able to ping the other computer. I ended up uninstalling the ethernet card in the offending machine and reinstalling and configuring. When I was done, it was all working again. We were even able to share a printer that we were not able to share last time!
I hope everyone has a wonderful Friday! I plan to do just that!