Alrighty...

 

-I have a laptop connected to the internet through a wireless lan.

-I want to connect my xbox360 to my laptop using a network cable, so that I can share my inet connection and play on xboxlive.

-How?

 

My laptop is running windows xp pro.

I have connected the laptop to the xbox360 physically, but I don't know how to share my inet with it.

Please help.

you should connect the xbox to the router if you want to share your connection with it.

 

otherwise, you need to bridge the interfaces, i'm not sure how you do that in xp though.

 

also, are you using standard cat5 or a patch cable, you need to use a patch cable for directly connecting the xbox and laptop.

I'm using the ethernet cable that came with the xbox360. Also I can't reach the router as it's on another floor in the house and I don't want cables running through the house. Shouldn't ICS (internet connection sharing in xp pro) work? The xbox website seems to be telling me to use that.

idk about patching a connection through a laptop...

 

I would look for something like this:

 

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0213283

 

This seems too expensive, and there are probably cheaper ones out there. I'm just to lazy to look for them