This is kind of a follow-on to my crossover cable bit a couple of days ago. On more than one occasion, I've helped someone out with direct connecting their Xbox 360 to their PC for sharing music. It's kind of a manual thing, but I think it comes up often enough to warrant a write-up here. So here you go.

 

First off, if you're going to network an Xbox 360 and computer together, I'm going to recommend you do it through a router or with ICS. Those are well-supported methods with all sorts of setup help; plus, if you do it right, you can get both Xbox Live and PC media at the same time. However, I know sometimes all you want to do is stick a cable between your console and Xbox 360 and just make it work. To do this, you'll need to assign manual IP addresses to your PC and your console. Note that all this method does is make your computer and your Xbox 360 talk to each other so you can stream media. Two devices hooked directly together, that's it. It's not for internet, nor is it for networking more than two machines together.

 

I'm sure I don't have to say this, but I'll say it anyway: change your network settings at your own risk. If someone else set up your network and you're not sure you can get your computer back on the network or internet after you take it off, you might want to reconsider. If you have any settings you want to keep, you should write them down before changing them, so you can change them back when you're done. It is really a simple process, but don't blame me if you dink up your settings.

 

That being said, let's get started. Before you begin, while your computer is hooked up to the internet, download the file at www.xbox.com/pcsetup. (Choose Save instead of Open when it gets to that point in the download.) This is so that you can run the media setup program while you're off the internet. After you have that, disconnect your PC network connection.

 

Ok. So you have a PC with an empty Ethernet port. You're not connected to anything at this point.

Voila. You've just assigned a manual IP address to your PC. Now for your Xbox 360 console.

The IP addresses I provided in these steps are completely arbitrary; if you don't like the ones I provided, you can make some up. Networking gurus are welcome to pipe up in comments with ways to streamline the process, but this should still work as-is. Happy streaming!