Let me offer something.. Are you using a hub or not? If you are directly connecting 2 computers, you will need your cat5 cable to be crossed. If you have the tools, you can do this yourself, or you can go buy one for relatively cheap. My guess is that this is not your problem, since you are able to see the other computers. One thing that has been pretty helpful has been the command prompt command : ipconfig /all (for the w2k box), and I cant remember what it is for the 9x box, winipcfg maybe? But regardless of what you set it (thru net properties), sometimes it will screw up, and the above command will help you out. Next, when you ping, are you giving the explicit IP number? or a DNS name? netbios should let you use names, but you might want to try the IP. Well, let me know how it goes...
j