PC to 360 Media Streaming

I'm having a lot of trouble making the connection between my PC and 360. I've tried using both an ethernet and a crossover cable to connect one to the other and neither seems to work. I've followed the directions on several sites to the letter, but the 360 doesn't appear in the list of things I can share media with.

Basically, I need to try this over from scratch. My goal is to try and connect my 360 directly to my PC using only an ethernet (or crossover, if necessary) cable to stream media and hopefully connect to the internet. The 360 site says this is possible, however it does not give very clear instructions as to how.

I think the problem is my PC is not picking up the 360 in any way, and I have no idea how to try and solve that. Should my PC pop-up that the 360 has been connected to it when I plug them together with the cable? So far it's not doing anything with either an ethernet or a crossover cable. My 360 doesn't appear to know it's been plugged into a PC either.

Any help with this would be much appreciated. I've googled this over and over again many different ways and the only answers are for different questions, and the support site for the 360 isn't detailed enough.

Ah. Good question. I'm on Windows XP.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try Zune right now.

EDIT: Motherfuck! Now the Zune installer doesn't open. I also realized I have some more question. For you guys who did connect your PCs and 360s, how did your PC detect it? Did it pop-up like it was new hardware and you had to run some setup or what? Also, is just using an ethernet cable okay or do I need a crossover?

Thanks for the help guys. I think I figured it out by mistake. Basically, I think the ethernet port on my computer is fucked, so I have to figure out how to fix it. Found out when I had to try and go wired for my internet for a bit.