Connecting to workgroup with 7 Home

At our office we have mostly XP computers, with a Vista laptop, 3 7 Pro and a Windows Home Server. All the computers communicate fine, except the 7 Home laptop. It can only see the 7 Pro computers and the Vista machine. It can ping all the other computers, but they will not show up in the network neighborhood. When I tried to map the server shares, it didn't work despite being able to see it under the "Other Devices".

The 7 Home laptop has network discovery turned on and all the XP clients have LLTD installed.

I can't figure out why the 7 Pro machines are having no problem, and all the computers can see the 7 Home laptop. Any help is appreciated.

I'm not sure if you mean Win 7 Home basic or Win 7 Home premium but apparently there is a problem Windows 7 Home versions not connecting properly when there is a server involved. I'm not sure about all the limitations of the Home version but there is a Technet thread which talks about the problem. The solution seems to be changing the authenitcation level on the Win 7 Home machine.

This does the same thing as the post above but it only needs to be done on the problem machine.

1 . Open registry editor ( Start search - regedit)
2 . Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
3. Create a new DWORD value with the following properties: NAME: LmCompatibilityLevel
VALUE: 1
Source> Network Share not working through Windows 7 home premium

I tried the regedit fix and so far it doesn't seem to be working. I'm still left with his laptop seeing the other computers running 7 and Vista, but no XP or Windows Home Server.

I'm telling you man . . . I have had this exact problem and the suggestion I gave you earlier did it for me. . . .give it a try and see if that helps . . .

I will try your idea stuberB, unfortunately, he will be gone next week so I won't have an answer for awhile. Thanks for the help.

Our consultant got back from the road today and I tried the above suggestions, both the registry edit and gpedit on computers in the network. The first problem is that only XP pro has gpedit so I was only able to do that on a few computers (most of the XP machines are home edition). That did not fix the problem.

The current state is this:
1. Network has approx 20 comptuers mostly running XP Home. Have a couple XP Pro, one 98, one Vista, three 7 Pro and a Windows Home Server(so bascailly server 2k3). All the comptuers except for the 7 Home Permium can see each other in the network neighborhood and share files and everything.
2. The 7 Home premuim can only see the other windows 7 computers.
3. The 7 Home premium comptuer has network discovery enabled, is using windows firewall (so the right ports are open), is on the same workgroup as the rest of the network, has been selected to use 40 or 56 bit encryption (however the 7 Pro comptuers have 128 selected and work fine).
4. All the computers can see the 7 Home premium computer, but only the 7 pro comptuers can access the shares on it.

I'm running out of ideas. My only guess is that there is something missing in 7 Home Premium that 7 Pro has, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Any help is appreciated.

Are you certain that the time/date settings are correct on the problem machine? "Yes it does matter"!

I checked the time and date on his computer and they are synched with the rest of the network. Still no dice, the win 7 computers can see him and access his shares, and he can do the same with them. But he can't see anyone elses computer. They can all see him but not access his shares. Thanks for the continued ideas.

If you can post a screen shot of your ipconfig /all typed into your command prompt then hit enter, from the problem laptop and also from one of the working machines that would be helpful. It sounds like the laptop isn't using the correct default gateway.