Homegroup Problem: Network Discovery Issue

RichardJU said:

chev65 said:

Try doing this from the Bad machine. Click the share with button then choose Homegroup read/write.

I'm not using Homegroups. I would need to set location to Home rather than Work. Is that what you were wondering?

Also did you get this question?

"I'm not sure what you mean by "If even one part of a name isn't correct""

Thanks again.

You said> I would need to set location to Home rather than Work. Is that what you were wondering?
You should only choose the Home setting if setting up a Homegroup. It's the first part of setting up Homegroup sharing IMO. If the machines are Windows 7 this one should work. I can't believe the amount of problems people are having with this,...Unbelievable!!

Use the "Work" setting if you need to use Workgroup for network sharing. We are talking about these settings in the picture. Besides going through all the check lists around here that is about all I can think of.

I'll tell you what, I'm at my wits end with this problem also, and the funny thing is that I don't even have a problem at all with my networking. I'm beginning to realize how silly it is that I'm having to track down a problem that I don't even have.

chev65 said:

You should only choose the Home setting if setting up a Homegroup. It's the first part of setting up Homegroup sharing IMO. If the machines are Windows 7 this one should work. I can't believe the amount of problems people are having with this,...Unbelievable!!

Sounds like your relentless patience is running out. I don't know if you mean I am having a problem following directions or Microsoft is having a problem with buggy software. Just so you know, I'm not having a problem with directions. I tried setting up a homegroup and have since given up. Now I'm just trying Workgroup sharing. They are Windows 7 and it doesn't work.

I found the answer elsewhere. Thanks again for all the help.

Here is what I needed to know:

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused by 1) a misconfigured firewall or overlooked firewall (including a stateful firewall in a VPN); or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls such as the built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3) not having identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines; 4) trying to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.

In Windows 7, go to Control Panel>All Control Panel Items>Network and Sharing Center. Click on "Change advanced sharing settings". You don't want to use Homegroup unless you have all Windows 7 machines. If you do and you want to use Homegroup, see Windows 7's Help & Support. Otherwise, in the Advanced Sharing:

Turn ON network discovery
Turn ON file and printer sharing
Turn ON sharing in the Public folder sharing section
Turn ON password protected sharing

For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see caveat in Item A below).

A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN) traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, turning on Windows 7's File and Printer Sharing as above will take care of this for you. If you aren't running a third-party firewall or have an antivirus/security program with its own firewall component, then you're fine. With third-party firewalls, I usually configure the LAN allowance with an IP range. Ex. would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your correct subnet. Refer to any third party security program's Help or user forums for how to properly configure its firewall. Do not run more than one firewall. DO NOT TURN OFF FIREWALLS; CONFIGURE THEM CORRECTLY.

B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.

C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just need to exist and match on all machines. DO NOT NEGLECT TO CREATE PASSWORDS, EVEN IF ONLY SIMPLE ONES . If you wish a machine to boot directly to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for convenience, you can do this:

Start>Search box>type: netplwiz [enter]
Click on Continue (or supply an administrator's password) when prompted by UAC

Uncheck the option "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". Select a user account to automatically log on by clicking on the desired account to highlight it and then hit OK. Enter the correct password for that user account (if there is one) when prompted. Leave it blank if there is no password (null).

D. If one or more of the computers on your network is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab).

E. Create shares as desired. In Windows 7 I usually share out the user's Desktop and the Public directory.

chev65 said:

I'll tell you what, I'm at my wits end with this problem also, and the funny thing is that I don't even have a problem at all with my networking. I'm beginning to realize how silly it is that I'm having to track down a problem that I don't even have.

Good on ya for persevering as long as you have. As you know, I have spent a lot of time trying to get Homegroups to work on my network. Reading through the (many) threads on the topic, I've come to the conclusion the software isn't 'mature' yet. SP1?

RogerR said:

chev65 said:

I'll tell you what, I'm at my wits end with this problem also, and the funny thing is that I don't even have a problem at all with my networking. I'm beginning to realize how silly it is that I'm having to track down a problem that I don't even have.

Good on ya for persevering as long as you have. As you know, I have spent a lot of time trying to get Homegroups to work on my network. Reading through the (many) threads on the topic, I've come to the conclusion the software isn't 'mature' yet. SP1?

The problem in nearly every case is user error from what I can tell. Nearly every problem I have seen here was solved by going through the procedure for setting up Homegroup and making sure to get all settings correct. No doubt there are exceptions to this, like what ever problem your having.

It also doesn't help that some of the services settings for using Homegroup were disabled by default on certain versions of Windows 7.

For me Homegroup is the best thing ever, I was getting prompts to type in the Homegroup password the second I got to the desktop after installing the Op system on all my Windows 7 machines. It doesn't get much easier than that.

chev65 said:

The problem in nearly every case is user error from what I can tell.

That becomes tautological if you include among "user error" the act of inserting the Windows 7 disk. :)

The only thing that fixed my problem was hearing from Microsoft that I need to create matching user names on all computers. I must have missed the dialog box that informed me of the need to do so.

chev65 said:

I don't have matching user names at all and Homegroup is working perfectly. :)

Good for you, although a sample of one or even one million is not conclusive. If Windows 7 fails only one percent of the time, that still affects hundreds of thousands of people.

chev65 said:

There are no official instructions for setting up the same user name and password on all machines anywhere from what I can tell so I would still consider that a work around for an under lying problem.

I agree, but it's an underlying problem entirely created by Microsoft. My absolutely fresh install failed. With that fix it works. So clearly my hardware is capable of functioning properly. The only software on the network was Microsoft and it failed.

Windows 7 failed through no fault of the hardware (or user), and the cure was an undocumented workaround from Microsoft Tech Support.

FWIW this was for Workgroup networking, not Homegroup. I haven't tried Homegroup since the fix.

endu said:

I've tried it in both settings (it is currently set to the second option). I actually have got it working right now, here is what I did.

I went to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. I found that SSDP Discovery service was set to "Disabled". I haven't had any reason to change services, so apparently it was set that way by default. After setting the service to "Automatic" and starting it, I was able to set Network Discovery to "on" successfully.

it works for me, thanx