Pardon me,I don't see how or why you have such a big problem with hard wire system ? I run 15 computers at my home and run 5 different OS . All I did was hook up a router to my DSL conection and then just ran Cat 5 cable to the computers.use cable nails to secure to wall,and done. You now have wired a home network. If you really want to do this, I would gladly talk you thru this. Contact me anytime. Good luck.

www.linksys.com in the menu there Support/Technical. Then I clicked on the North American Continent & chose USA. Choose a product [arrow] Routers and Access points [drop down list] Wireless Router. Then I choose the top right pict of a two antenna unit, its drop down list for the model number that I guessed ..WRT150N . ,,, on that page I typed in the question; Can't get windows updates. Then they show a list of bullet links, this time I clicked More at the bottom of that list. . then the link for " Encountering Difficulties Accessing Some Websites when Connected to a Linksys Router" has several possible fixes. One is that image above.

"As soon as Windows 7 is installed, it creates a default HomeGroup. If it detects an existing HomeGroup, you will be given the opportunity to join, but you will need the password. For home and small business users, HomeGroup is an excellent tool, but there is a problem. HomeGroup only works when all other machines on the network have Windows 7 installed, which in the short term, may not be the case. There will be many situations where the network has XP or Vista machines as part of the network, in addition to Windows 7. So, how is it possible to get them all to work together?" See link above.

I havent done this in years.... so take this with a grain of salt,, but its the general way to do it. Each computer probably already has a network adapter, also known as Ethernet Cards. If not they'll need to add one. If they don't have a network switch or network hub sitting around to connect a cat 5 ethernet patch cord from each computer to, which is probably the best way - but the least cost way they would use a Cat 5 ethernet "crossover cable" plugged one end into each of the computers network adapters. Run the network wizzard on the computer with the modem and set up internet connection sharing. Which will offer to make a floppy to make it easy to configure the second/slave computer. The computer with the modem will need to be booted into windows before the other can connect. ~ Or they could go look around Apple's website and look at the Airport wifi routers,,, at least one, maybe all of those, has a dial up modem inside and then with the addition of wifi adapters both computers could be turned on and off and dial the modem anytime they wanted.