Begginer here so excuse the naivete. I get a connection to other computer but can see no folders on either. Will they show in my network places or shared folders? Also on laptop i get an ip of 169.254.278.182, will this remain constant or will change each time i connect? Desktop ip is 169.254.186.196.
Both these IP addresses are invalid (169,254 is reserved for "unable to get an IP address") and indicate that you are not getting an IP from your router or from your ISP [ I'm assuming you have some sort of router?] .
Yes, they'll probably change every time you reboot either machine. The machine is starting up, trying to get an IP address from a server, failing, and picking a random reserved address.
If you are working without a router, you should set both PCs to fixed IP addresses in say the 192.168.0.x range.
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