Setting up a pc to get internet from another pc

So about a week ago, i took my desktop to my friends. Friend 1 had a desktop with a wireless USB linksys reciever, running vista in his basement. Freind 2 had a laptop with a built-in internet reciever also running vista and also in the basement. Now I wanted to set up mine so i was next to them and my computer is a desktop running windows XP.

Now friend 2 was able to connect to friend 1's internet. We thought ok, we have an ethernet cable, i could plug it into mine and then friend 2's computer and recieve internet. So he automatically picked up friend 1's internet. Then to get it to mine, he bridged the connection. The only thing is, my computer didn't detect the internet that was being fed to it.

So then we take the cord running from friend 2's computer and plug it into friend 1's instead of mine. His internet automatically picked up the connection even when we unplugged friend 1's USB wireless reciever. So then we were like, ok take the USB wireless reciever and put it into my computer. It detect the USB hardware. Not even a notice in my taskbar that something has been plugged in.

So after fiddling with it, I go to start>settings>control panel>system>hardware>Device manager, then plug the wireless USB reciever into my computer. something with a yellow question mark popped up so I was like ok we have something. So this told me there was a missing driver. So my friend downloaded the linksys driver on to a USB drive and then i tried intalling the driver on my computer so it would recognize the USB wireless reciever and it just stayed at 30% forever so i just quit with trying to set it up alltogether.

Anything I did wrong or something I should do next time? Should I run the cord from friend 1's desktop to mine instead of the laptop? Why was my computer not recieving the cord connection or the USB connection? Is it because my computer is XP and theirs is vista?