Hey megreen, I had a problem similar to this and it turns out I had wifi on one machine and trying to connect to another machine via cat5. disconnecting from the wifi connection (not disabling wifi) solved my problems. with your it could be a similar solution except since all the rest of your pc's are using wifi except your laptop you could try getting one of those micro wifi adaptors for $10 and trying from there and also disconnect your cat5 cable. I think the mix of wired and wireless connections is throwing off the OS somehow. you would think windows would address it by now.

megreen831 said:
I've seen that others are having problems similar to mine. This brings a certain peace to my life.

Problem: I'm unable to join my computers to a homegroup. The problem exists in both directions. If either one has a homegroup, the other cannot see it. When I go to network and sharing center, I can see the option: "HomeGroup: Ready to Create" but I do not see an option to join. If a homegroup exists on the computer, I see "joined".

Current Configuration:
PC (home grown AMD Athlon)
Laptop (Dell Latitude E5500).

Users:
administrator account on both computers, same password
user account on both computers, same password

Network Configuration: Verizon FIOS Router/WAP combo. Laptop is using cable to connect. Wireless is currently turned off on laptop.
Both computers are in the same "workgroup". Both computers are set to "Home network".

Symptoms:
1. Unable to see homegroup on network in order to join it.

2: in network status, in the map at the top of the screen, on the PC it is called "Network" and on the laptop it is the same name as my SSID.

3: from time to time, as I'm troubleshooting, I observe that the link between my network icon and the internet icon, within the status map, shows a red X, and "connections" will only show "local", and yet I'm still able to surf the internet.

Troubleshooting steps taken:
1. chose "leave the homegroup" on the PC and create it on Laptop. fail.
2. performed the old and faithful "share" and was able to share an entire disk (e:) from the PC and see it, and manipulate it from the laptop. (ping also works, but that's obvious now). Shared a folder on the Laptop and was able to access it from PC. PCs show up in "computer / network" on both computers, and shares are visible there also.
3. On another forum post came a suggestion to disable IPv6.
- Went to properties for the LAN connection on both computers and unchecked "Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6).
- restarted both PCs. (unnecessary, I know now)
- tried to create homegroup and received error: "a homegroup can only be created on a home network". Repeated this, and the result on both machines.
- checked IPv6 box back on in connection settings.
- repeated steps again and created homegroups with same being that I cannot join the newly created from from other other computer.

I've tried to provide a comprehensive set of the experience.

Your help is appreciated!