Ok, I have been thinking about this one for awhile. This is how I would handle it.
Buy a crossover cable (should be cheap and it will say crossover on it. RadioShack has them) and put in static IPs on both machines. Then use the crossover cable to connect the two PCs together. Ping PC1 from PC2. Then Ping PC2 from PC1. This will tell you if your two PCs are able to talk to one another. If they can then we can say it's the router with the issue. If they can't then it's the NIC on the second PC that isn't functioning.




