Home Network has problems

I am trying to set up a Home network.

Basically two machines
1)Vista CTP 5308>AMD Athlon 2800+/MSI motherboard/512 MB/80GBHDD/nVidia
GeForce 5600 128MB/ 3Com USB Wireless 802.11g/Realtek PCI Ethernet card
2) Windows XP SP2>Acer Travelmate 4002 WNLCi/Centrino 1.7/512MB/60GB HDD/Ati
Radeon 9700, 64MB/3Com USB Wireless 802.11G

Could not install Vista on the Acer, it kept bluescreening after about 35%
of the 2nd stage of install (safe mode didn't work either). Installed fine
on Desktop.

My desktop is connected to the internet using a LAN connection given by my
service provider (I believe this unique to India). Problem is I can't get to
setup a small office/home office network on Vista. They are on the same
workgroup, XP on the Acer is setup to connect to the Vista desktop which
has WF/ICS turned on, browse is enabled, the wireless is set to ad-hoc. The
wireless adapters are connecting (I do not have a wireless access point),
but I don't see a SOHO network setup ala Windows XP. I have tried every
setup possible in Network Center.

Would appreciate any help.

Atanu Ghose
CTO
Trisoft Systems