homegroup sucks

hello,
I have a real puzzling problem with homegroup and hope someone will have some suggestions.
I created a homegroup on pc A. Tried to join with pc B. Tried everything but didnt work. Then after about a year I reformated pc B and it joined the homegroup instantly, hassle free.
So I reformatted my laptop, installed same operating system but nothing. Tried many settings. I can see the other two computers and homegroup says available to join but after entering the password, it takes about a minute and then says "Windows cannot set up homegroup on this computer". Before this laptop I had another and it never could join homegroup either.
The laptop connects wirelessly to Belkin N1 Vision router. The other computers are connected to the router through cable.
Any suggestions would be very welcome and sorry if its too long.

Try going through this Homegroup trouble shooter list. It sometimes helps to join the Homegroup with a wired connection then change over to wireless after you join.

When ever I install Win 7 onto a new machine I always have one of my other Homegroup machines turned on so that Windows can see there is already a Homegroup. I get a prompt to join the Homegroup before I ever get to the desktop and it works everytime for me, wired or wireless makes no difference.

Check each item carefully as it only takes one setting out of place and it's not going to work.


Ultimate Troubleshooting Guide for Windows 7 HomeGroup Connection Issues

I tried everything from that link. I only have to try with a network cable instead of wireless.

just registered to share a two year experience.
have two computers at home, mine with win7 ultimate x64 and wife's with win7 pro x64.
homegroup has always sucked nearly to the point of wanting to throw a computer out the window, finding out a printer and scanner i had on winxp that wasn't compatible with win7 did not help either.

i finally got around to playing with my 2 computer network,
problem was wife's win7pro computer could always see my win7ult. computer and i could move files back and forth from a shared desktops only when sitting at wife's computer. When at my computer if i try to connect to hers i would always get passworded and it would never let me in. Other day i managed to get the homegroup working but not sure how. only thing i did was recreate the homegroup from scratch numerous times. following day after computers had gone to sleep or shutdown the homegroup stopped working. I think i also found out that if i run ccleaner on my computer that that also nukes the homegroup.
i did some research and just realized the winxp way was the best.
disable the 2 homegroup services in services.msc. do not use homegroup.
in network advanced sharing, turn on password protected sharing and "use user account and passwords to connect to other computers". do not use homegroup (recommended).
after doing this, just make sure there is the same name account on every pc with the same password.
then under network icon or in address bar you can go to the other pc no problem.

homegroup definitely sucks