Need help setting up small office network with a NAS.

[Biodiesel]

I have 2 lenovo h320 desktop running 7 pro 64 and a dell laptop running 7 pro 32. I have a seagate blackarmor 220 nas as well as a netgear srxn3205 wireless vpn firewall router.

My first issue is setting up homegroup... I can create one on any pc and see it to join on the other 2 but when i enter the password it tells me I have a network problem. I can ping each pc's ip address from the others. I have checked all the typical fixes, ipv6 enabled... Need some help please.

Secondly, I need help understanding the network layout and how the NAS plays a role in the mapping. When I map the network it shows the 3 pcs all conected to the router and to the internet but it shows the NAS as other devices at the bottom. I have mapped a few folders from the NAS to each pc and can see as well as use them but not sure why it is not part of the map.

Thank you very much for help.

 

[Maguscreed]

what I do with my nas is simply create a desktop shortcut of //192.168.2.4
Where 192.168.2.4 is the ip of the nas.

I have mapped it as a drive in the past, but this has always lead to a problem at some point. In xp it once lead to a slew of system errors when the NAS was turned off when the system was booted.
So I've dropped the mapping option for the simple shortcut.
The result is the same anyhow.