newbie networking

I am not too hot with computers, so if any one can help me, please explain it simply! I have broadband set up on a main computer and this is connected to four other computers via a LAN hub. It was all working fine until we had problems with the internet connection and modem- both had to be re-installed and all is working fine now.
We have also had problems since with viruses as we were infected with a worm (welchia) and a few trojans! They've all been eradicated now but I am unable to connect to the internet on the other computers (can only connect on the main computer) or see them on 'computers near me' for file sharing etc. They all run on different systems, the main computer is 2000, another is XP, another 98 etc etc. How can I check they 'ping' to each other/the hub? I don't thing these pinging thing is happening. Could the network not be working due to the other computers having viruses/worms? I will check them later on for that but is there any other constructive advice anyne can give to find out what the problem could be?

Cheers

E

Somewhere you need a router in this picture, either Internet Connection Sharing in your main computer or an external cable/dsl router (my recommendation).

from any of the computer, go to start and click run. type cmd or command and click Ok. You should get the DOS prompt. To ping another computer you have to know the other computers ip. Lets say your win98 computer ip is 192.168.2.5. At the DOS prompt type ping 192.168.2.5 and you should get the response time and etc etc from the win98 machine. Pinging is just to check whether there are any connections between your comp. You can even try to ping to a website like ping www.yahoo.com to see if thet computer have connection to the net.

fozyosman: this thread is really old.

Anyway, I've moved the thread to the correct forum...