Have you considered installing a small router, with a hardware firewall ?
(E.g. from NetGear or DLink). You could then use your desktop for the WCG task, with the router handling the internet connection - your desktop will be safe, as the router's firewall will hide it from the Net.

I have not tried this as I think it is much more reasonable and effective to network your computers together.....

But over on the grid.org forums back in August a person called "QuarkBomb" presented Version 1.6.1 of his "Offline Crunching Guide". Rather than copy the entire thing over here, I will simply post a pointer to his guide. I suspect that it will work pretty much "as-is" if you are willing to go through the appropriate steps. It is here .

Again, I suggest that it this is much more difficult, time consuming and error prone than simply putting a couple of cheap NIC (10/100 Ethernet) cards and a Xover cable between the computers and running Internet Connection Sharing (ICS).

Which ever method you choose good luck ... and, if you will please, lets us know what you chose and how it worked out; other users will likely pass this way.

PS marysduby just went through something very similar and solved the problem with the simplest of networks see here

Hi RT, I'll try QuarkBonds trick and tell you how it goes.

PS. for those who think a firewall or a network hub or router is safe enough when you use Internet Explorer... think again. DirectX dowloads can fool you into infecting your own pc with spyware or remote keyloggers. If you have kids using your PC they will get fooled into installing something via a trusted signature (that U choose to trust).

When I find out how a remote keylogger was setup on my machine (discovered by Webroot Spysweeper) then, maybe, I'll connect it.

Thanks for your input

Hi gzappia,


... didn't you mean ActiveX ?
Happy crunching