Can't join Homegroup

[eksine]

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.

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!