I haven't used a crossover in such a long time; I can't recall if you need to manually set the IPs on both machines.
But if the lights are lit up, you should be able to see the other computer in My Network Places when you "view workgroup computers." (If you haven't set both laptops as having the same workgroup, right-click on My Computer, click Properties, click the Computer Name tab, click the Change button, and enter the same value for Workgroup on both machines.)
To verify, open a command prompt, type ipconfig to get the machine's IP address, and on the other machine type ping 192.168.1.1 (where 192.168.1.1 is the IP of the first laptop) ; you should get an instant response with 0% loss.
Good luck...