Limited or No Connectivity

I don't have wireless in my desktop, so since I haven't gotten cable yet here at my apartment I've been using Internet Connection Sharing from my notebook over a crossover cable to connect my desktop to the internet. This hasn't been working so well, however. The sharing itself works, but my notebook got some update or something that has broken things for the last few days and Internet Connection Sharing hasn't worked. I was going to try to System Restore, but it wasn't turned on, because apparently it didn't properly recognize it when I set up the dual boot with linux, and it didn't realize the C drive was the same C drive that was turned on. So I haven't been able to use it for a couple days. Now I have it as a bridged connection, so it is working again.