SP 2010 farm configuration

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SharePoint2010

Hi,

I am trying self learning of sharepoint 2010. Please help me in the following.

I have a laptop and created a vm and installed sp 2010 in it on win ser 2008 r2 OS.
Got a desktop too with win server 2008 r2 and installed ads & iis.
now both laptop & desktop are in a netowrk on wireless. (can ping both machines)

now before i install sp 2010 farm on vm in laptop, i am trying install ads and its asking for forest name. should i create a new forest or join a existing one (the forest i created in desktop). i was actually trying to joing exisiting forest but unable to connect to it. I have also set preferred DNS on VM as my desktop ip address, still there is an issue.

am i doing it right ? can some one tell me the steps for me to create a sharepoing farm ?
if u can refer me to some articles also i ll be very thankfull.

thanks in advance.