Richard, So: You have two laptops. Both installed from the first DVD. Never connected to the Internet.
Did you actually manage to install the firmware to make the WiFi cards work? Outwith that firmware, it is very unlikely that anything will work. [And this goes back to one of the previous email chains]. If you fire up one of the laptops, and run " dmesg | less " - do you find references to WiFi hardware (and corresponding firmware being loaded) ? It doesn't really matter what ad-hoc networking you want to put in place: absent the firmware, almost all Wifi hardware is a brick. The older (and significantly slower) WiFi hardware where the firmware is contained in free drivers is very rare now. All the very best, as ever, Andy C.