can i popup messages

Factual Questions
1

a simple yes no will suffice ( if yes, how ?)
Can i message other computers on a LAN using WinXp(home)( both computers running XP) and have the message pop up on the machine.
No-one runs msn on teh gateway pc downstairs and its a niggle running downstairs to find its ip. would be nice to just request it.

On a related note, how do i go about writing a script that will so something like ( write the ip of the gatewayPC to a text file and stre it in its shared folder so that i can run the script and read the file from the shared folder ( stupid dynamic ip)

I tried searching for the first question, adn couldnt find any prev.posts.

Thanks in advance ( i know the second one is really easy, i just dont know what i’m supposed to use for this script)

Qis

2

What an awfully typed post, and i want the message to appear on the screen, not the actual machine ( although that would be neat )

3

I think you can, if you know the IP… but is that what you are trying to use the message to figure out?

4

I know the ip of the lan-adapter, but not the ip of the modem connectiong the gateway to the internet. I would like to be able firstly to message the computer downstairs( the gateway machine) and request whoever is on it to message me back the ip of the modem.
I quite like the idea of a littel script to run somethig like

“ipconfig>currentgatewayip.txt” ( but i dont know how to go about writing this script )

i know the initial post was a bit duff, sorry.