Two Win7 PCs in need of networking

Gator said:

solarblast said:

OK, I changed "Home Network" to Public. A dialog appeared shown in the attachment. What am I supposed to do there? Use what's below "Change your network settings"? If I press Public network, it gives me the three choices again, Home, Work, Public.

Select Home then write down the password.

This is the password you will use to connect another computer to your homegroup
Homegroup - Add Computer or Join

I've seen the link before. It looks like over kill. If I have to deal with, I will pay some $ to a local network guy here.

See attached.
OK, I went back to Home, and clicked a Create Homegroup (documents, printer, in my case). It balked with the msg in the attachment.

My pwds are the same on each PC.

Here is the repeat. Apparently, you cannot see it above.

Gator said:

solarblast said:

Here is the repeat. Apparently, you cannot see it above.

Ok so now that you are setup with a Home Network... Lets start over.

Leave the Homegroup on the PC you created it on
Homegroup - Leave

Lets create the Homegroup again
Homegroup - Create

Then Join the new Homegroup
Homegroup - Add Computer or Join

You may need to disable antivirus software

Here is a troubleshooting guide to help
Ultimate Troubleshooting Guide for Windows 7 HomeGroup Connection Issues

These instructions were compiled by Chev nearly 4 years ago, to give credit where its due.

I don't see why I need to go to the trouble of creating and joining, as described. It's pretty easy. I don't plan to disable the antivirus. The guide looks good, but ...

I happened to bring this problem up to my wife. She's got two Linux machines, which she uses a lot. She has two Win 7 PC, which she casually uses. That surprised me. She told me that she had no trouble getting homegroups on her Win7, networked. Apparently, it just happened the first time she put them on the network. She got very interested in my problem.

We discovered that #2 had a partially severed ethernet cable that stopped #1 and #2 syncing. Second we found an XP PC (#3) and had a name identical to #2. That happened because #3 contains a lot of programs I need in #2, so it made some sense to name #2 the same as #3. She dived into some admin tool, and found three "peer" items, one needed to be changed. It didn't help. Still #1 will not allow homegroups to be installed. Next we checked the firewall, and made a change there. Still no luck. There's something wrong with #1.

We've given up for day.

Done. An important ingredient here was Admin Tools on the Control Panel. Click on Services, Scroll down to Homegrouplistener. Double click on it, and set Startup type to automatic. Click Start under Service status. OK.

Scroll down one line to HomegroupProvider. Double click, and do the start per above. Next go to Peer Networking groups, and set as above.

My wife figured it out.

TheCyberMan said:

Which computers are which?

Remember it is you who asked for help.

Check out my last post below.