Homegroup through access point NA

[Choglidite]

Help Please! I'll try to be detailed on this. I've worked on it and read on it for almost 7 hours and I'm stuck. I'm using a Win 7 Pro desktop that is hardwired and a Win 7 Home Premium laptop wireless. Both current on all updates.

My Comcast modem is hooked into a WRT160N that is hardwired to a WRT400N which is being used as an access point, and to the desktop PC. Both routers have the latest firmware. Both routers have the same SSID and password but use different channels. (2 & 6) Internet works perfect both wired and wireless through both routers.

The homegroup has been set up through the desktop but I've removed and added homegroups on both machines multiple times. My problem doesn't go away. The homegroup works when the laptop is either wired or wireless using the WRT160N. It will not work at all through the WRT400N. I can be in the room with the WRT160N on the homegroup, when I move to the other router so the wireless switches to the WRT400N, it drops the homegroup. The internet stays connected just fine. Once it drops the homegroup, it can't find it until I go back to the main router.

Both machines have IPv6 addresses, auto discovery is on.

Anyone have an idea? Thanks for the help!

 

[Choglidite]

Resolved

I reset the router to default and started again. I set it up exactly like this link and my issues went away. How To Convert a Wireless Router into an Access Point - SmallNetBuilder

There are some subtle differences between the setup links I found posted and this one. Having spent way to much time trying to resolve myself, I know one issue with the other links. They wanted different SSIDs. When you're setting up an access point with different SSIDs it can cause some network hand off issues. Some PCs will not drop one SSID to pick up another unless the signal starts to fail. On smart phones, that is the case in spades. We messed with both an I-phone and Droid and neither liked two different SSIDs on the same network.With the SSID the same, the hand off between PCs and smart phones is fast and invisible.

I found lots of threads with the same issue, hope this helps some of you.