Windows 7: network sporatic about showing other systems.

Hi new here and I know very little about network setup other than to say I can set up a home network. lol I am working for a company and have need to access several files from my employer's pc. Sometimes when I boot up, I can click on network and all the systems show up. I think there are about 9 pc's on the network. But sometimes when I click on network, only a couple show up.

Again, I apologize for not knowing specifics, but if anyone knows of some simple things I can do or test, I would greatly appreciate it. I think we are running a pc with windows 7 as a backup and gateway, so I guess we dont have a server per sey. Thanks for any suggestions in advance!

Are all these PC's runned together in a Wired or Wireless state? The reason why you might not see these other PC's at certain times because they can turn off their wireless networks at any time.

Tee

Are the others on?

What is the network setup?

Just give us as much info as you can we will fill in the gaps


Ken

its a wired network. and yes the other pcs are on when this happens. My desktop is not the only one that experiences this, but mine seems to lose network systems more often. For the last two days, I have rebooted my desktop many times and finally at the most got 7 pcs on our network to show. The one I needed happened to be one of the pcs that never showed up on the network. lol

Ken, when you say what is the network setup, what specifically do you need to know. Now I am not at work presently and wont be until monday morning. As I said earlier, all the pcs are running windows 7 as far as I know. All seem to be wired to a central computer running windows 7 as well that is simply used for data backup storage. I mean its not running a server environment.

I really dont know much about the router or switch, so cant comment there either.

I was hoping there might be some simple basic steps I could take to test network connections. I have run the network diagnosticson my own pc when it couldnt find another pc, but nothing helped there.