The green light you see is PROBABLY the "keep alive". It means that there is an electrical connection between the PC or laptop and the hub. This is the first step towards getting a working connection.

#1. Open a command (DOS) window on both machines and type "ipconfig /all".

#2. Look at the ip address and subnet mask info. Do the subnets match?

They should be something like:

192.168.1.2 ip address for PC
255.255.255.0 subnet mask

192.168.1.100 ip address for laptop
255.255.255.0 subnet mask

Notice how the 192 is above a 255?

The important thing is that the subnets MATCH
-and-
The ip addresses match for every place there is a 255 number in the subnet.

Example:
192.168.1.100
255.255.255.0
-and
192.168.1.200
255.255.255.0
will work.

192.168.1.100
255.255.255.0
-and
192.168.1.200
255.255.255.252
will NOT work (or should not work). The subnets do not match.

192.168.1.100
255.255.255.0
-and-
192.168.2.200
255.255.255.0
will NOT work. The ip addresses are not on the same subnet. (the ip addresses are not the same where the subnet numbers are 255).

This is not completely correct nor is it exhaustive. But it should be enough to get you operational with a simple subnet.

#4. Again, in a command window, type "show route" on both machines.

This will show you the path the packets will take. This should be very similar on each machine. The only variation should be the ip addresses you found in the first steps.

After that, if it still doesn't work, it sounds like Windows might not have the correct driver loaded or there is something else configured incorrectly.