Homegroup won’t come home

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I have 4 computers: my main one which has just had Win10 reinstalled, a backup computer, a laptop and a spare computer which I use for testing new software. All the computers (except the backup which has Win7) are Win10. I created a homegroup on the laptop and tried to join the others.They all did (inc. the Win7 one) but NOT the main one. When I click on Homegroup on it in CP, it says there is no Homegroup on the network and would I like to create one? It is set to find other comps on the network and also to be found by them but it sees nothing and none of the others can see it either.

The main is connected to the modem by wire, the others by wireless through a wireless router (also connected to the modem by wire). All 4 can access the net and each other except this odd one out. I had considered shutting down the Homegroup from the laptop and starting a new one from the main one but I suspect the result will be the same: it will be on its own in the Homegroup. Can anyone suggest a solution to this eerie problem? One of the reasons I’m anxious to get the main one connected is that I had lost all my documents, pics etc. in a major crash and would like to share all those that exist on the other computers and of course to keep updating it (I’m using the backup as my main one until I have restored everything on the main that I had lost). Before you ask, all computers are up-to-date and virus/malware free and working error-free.

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If, on all computers, you Share the involved folders, and in Control Panel Network/Sharing panel you click on share this, share that, make public, etc. — all computers should be able to converse with each other via Explorer’s left side menu Network. My three computers here, running Windows 7 Pro, only share via Explorer, never Homegroup.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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All computers (and files) are set to share but only in Private, not Public, in other words, only within the Network. In Explorer I can see every other computer except the Main and vice versa. No idea why.

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Clover47, I never really understood the WHYs of the WHATs. In my home, all three talk to each other.
When I take one laptop to school, I immediately go into Network/Sharing area, change advanced sharing settings, both home[?] and public sections — I turn off all sharing, turn off all searching, turn off all publishing, turn on ask for password — save and do my good stuff at school

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Most routers have wired connections. Can you connect the main PC to the router?

--Joe

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It is connected. The ones that are wireless are the other 3 which all see each other.
“The main is connected to the modem by wire, the others by wireless through a wireless router”

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Does the router have a firewall?

--Joe

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No it hasn’t. And I’m not using Windows firewall either but Karspersky which has its own firewall.

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You might consider disabling Kaspersky Firewall and using only Windows Firewall on all computers, then test. My Comodo was causing data-const–er blockage somewhat, changed to Windows Firewall — all is well

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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That’s actually a very good suggestion; unfortunately it won’t work. I forgot to mention something. My Kaspersky is a 1-year sub for 3 computers. The last one, the Test Computer is not on K, just a standard anti virus and normal W firewall. It can see 2 of the other computers (except Main) and vice versa, so Main cannot see either the 2 K comps nor the 1 on W firewall. If not for that, I would have removed all the K firewalls and tried them all on W but it seems it won’t make any difference. But still a very good suggestion, thanks.

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Clover, hello.
Couple of things to check: in Control Panel, click on System, then on Computor name. Ensure that they all have the same name, it defaults to “Workgroup” at times. Also, make sure that they all belong to either a private network or business. Both these settings are in “Computor Name “.

These might be useless suggestions but worth a try. I have had no end of trouble in W-10 and Network but lately, they have been easy on me, nopro. I keep writing it up un Feedback Hub, let us both kept harping on this. Jean.

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Thanks Jean. I used to have a business name before my paraplegia and the initials of it were SD. I’ve kept that up and all my computers now have SD instead of Workgroup, even the few I still fix for friends but I’ll make sure I haven’t accidentally missed one. I’ve never had problems with it prior to Win10 (which should be renamed Win1 or even Win½ or even Win¼!)

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…in Control Panel, click on System, then on Computor name. Ensure that they all have the same name, it defaults to “Workgroup” at times…

Confusion of “Computer Name” with “Workgroup” settings.

“Computer Name” setting must be unique for each system within the Workgroup (e.g.: “JACKS-PC-1”, “JACKS-PC-2”, etc.).

The “Workgroup” setting must be the same on each system, e.g.: “WORKGROUP”, “MSHOME”, or one you choose yourself for your workgroup.

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Hello, Coochin.

No confusion here, I might say. “Computor Name” referred to the tab after you go System in Control Panel, not the actual computer name, that has no meaning in actual LAN setup, methinks. Mentioning “Workgroup” leads to the proper action, in my mind, anyway.

Have a great day. Jean.

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I couldn’t agree more. Both of these appear under the System properties. The computer name is basically that you can identify which computer from among several you are looking at. They have no meaning to the system per se. The workgroup however is a different story. The “Workgroup” is just a default name to ensure some name is put in there but it can be changed to whatever you choose; but all computers must be in the same workgroup in the system, whatever you name it.

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Clover, you got it. Have fun. Jean.

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Sometimes over here I have to boot the turkeys one at a time, beginning with S01, then S02, then S03; dunno why, go figure. Sometimes I wish Free Birds would apply in my house and we would all have pizza! and no more computer problems.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Sometimes I wish…..we would all have pizza! and no more computer problems.

Hear hear! My dream; sadly my small town has no pizza shop.

I spoke to MS Redmond; the initial help person spoke English like I speak Svahili. He couldn’t find my CP although I had an icon on my desktop. But he did organize a phone call in a few hours from a higher level tech to see if they can sort this out so I may have some good noose later. Probably installed by flying pigs.

If I sound a bit sceptical it’s because this has been an ongoing problem for close to 4 months, among with other similar problems which Fred Langa has helped resolve, bless him. Alas, he has been silent on this but then this is an illogical sort of problem. I suspect the solution may be a complete reformat of the drive and start again. I had already lost a heap of stuff, not much left to lose. But we’ll see.

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The main is connected to the modem by wire, the others by wireless through a wireless router (also connected to the modem by wire).

I’m confused about your wiring description. Does the “main” computer connect to the router, and the router then connects to the modem? (This is what I’d expect.)
Your description left me thinking that your modem has multiple ethernet jacks. Does it?

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The main computer is connected to the modem/router via an RJ45 cable. The others are connected via a wireless router which is also connected to the wired router. The modem/router has 4 slots but I cannot connect all the computers via RJ45 as they are too far away and in different rooms but the wireless router works very well and there are no connection problems.

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Clover, as dumb as this sounds…lettuce try something. Can the main computer consistently commune at least with one other computer? By commune – I mean can at least two computers, main plus one more, copy from, copy to, move from, move to, read/write files, meddle with folders, and so on? If yes, then, somehow we can discover what settings on both computers made that so?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Sadly no; Main sees no others and none of them see Main. I’m very disappointed as MS promised to call me today, even confirmed it by email but wasted a couple of hours of my time while I waited for nothing so I’m no further along this path as I was. Looks like a total format and reinstall may be on the cards if I don’t achieve a breakthrough soon.

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…and I take it the children [non-main] computers are not talking to each other either, correct?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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They all talk to each other and see each other except for the black sheep in the family which is set to discover the others and be discovered but is stomping his foot.

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Me again, Clover. Good morning.

Here I see mentions of Control Panel -> Homegroup but no mention of Control Panel -> Network & Sharing Center. Have a good look and see if you, per chance, did not miss a simple setting. This is so easy, to me, that it might just be a stupid click missing. I am no wiz in this regard and I get my sharing all set up after every new build in Insider mode. My question to MS is why mess around with an individual network/LAN settings ??? Why default to HOMEGROUP when it was good and working with “NAME” here ?

Edit : Did you try to go to Device Manager -> Ethernet Controller -> Disable ( or uninstall ) then look for Hardware change ?

We shall never know ! Have a great day. Jean.

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Since your “main” computer doesn’t seem to “see” the others, from the main computer can you ping any of the others?

Have you compared settings on each of them by opening a command prompt and entering the command, “ipconfig /all” (without quotes of course)?

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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I’ll have to get back to you on that. IPconfig gave me a 50-line answer, none of which answered my q but I can’t access the Lounge from the Main (don’t ask me why or I’ll tell ya and you willl inherit my migraine!) so I’ll have to email it to me, myself and Irene and paste it on here. But I have made some progress: I’ve gone from a headache to a migraine. Two other points:
1. MS rang me yesterday….at 10PM! I did try to tell the original guy I spoke to what their local time would be at 10AM here but he just said not to worry, they’ll sort it out. Hope they can find solutions better than they can tell the time.
2. I paired my mobile to…guess what….the Main! But not to the others. I suspect my migraine will turn into a tsunami real soon. Nothing is making sense here. I had the mobile paired to both Win8 (before it became Main and Win10) AND Win7 (on which I’m typing and which sees everything like Superman’s X-ray vision but not the mobile, suddenly). It’s not the end of the world, I only use the mobile when I’m in hospital to keep in touch with creditors who want to sue me coz I’m 5 mins late with some payment. I was really trying to see what did and didn’t work outside of Homegroup. W7 has been up and running since Noah sent me a birthday greeting; Main (just a month old since reinstalment) has less on it than clothes at a nudist colony, yet it saw my mobile instantly and W7 looked under the carpet, in the rubbish bin, nada, zip, zilch. Go figure. If you want a good laugh, keep tuning in to this thread; the entertainment is better than most of the funny TV shows.

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Sorry! I can sympathize with a migraine experience (I had those as a pre-teen, many years ago).
I’ll leave you to Microsoft (until, or unless, they make your headache worse) but I’ll be lurking and reading this thread.

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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Home Built: Windows 10 Home 64-bit, AMD Athlon II X3 435 CPU, 16GB RAM, ASUSTeK M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3 (AM3) motherboard, 512GB SanDisk SSD, 3 TB WD HDD, 1024MB ATI AMD RADEON HD 6450 video, ASUS VE278 (1920x1080) display, ATAPI iHAS224 Optical Drive, integrated Realtek HD Audio

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You’re welcome! And the way things are developing, I should start charging for it. The next enthralling episode will be after 10am local (as everybody is from a different place, local is the best to nominate, except I don’t know what the time is in outer space so MS, you’re on your own there). Local is Sydney, Australia. This is actually a sequel to an earlier post (see “http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//174065-Windows-10-update-problem”). It is also related to the book “The Never Ending Story” or possibly “A Tale of Two Systems”, take your pick.

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I haven’t forgotten to update….MS did ring (albeit at 11, not 10) but all that happened in 2 hours is that V1511 was reinstalled, wiping out about 100 utilities and accessories like Acrobat, Flash Player, Weatherzone etc. At the end, still no Homegroup, just hours of reinstalling in sight. But they said they will call back tomorrow at 10 (9? 11?) to see what happened. If I started typing now I wouldn’t be able to finish the list of things that had disappeared before they called. Sigh…

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Have you triple checked the basics?

IPv6 enabled on all systems; network discovery enabled; Peer Networking Grouping and HomeGroup Provider services running

From the problem system, can you ping the IPv6 address of the main system and can the main system ping the IPv6 address of the problem system?

Microsoft has a good basic troubleshooter of HomeGroup issues.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/homegroup-problems-in-windows

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in addition to checking needed services, and other typical checks, have you checked to be sure all machines are using dhcp and are on the same ip subnet? You say something about a modem/router with the main PC wired and a wifi router for the others. I’d suggest move the wired main PC to a port on the wifi router, the wifi router should be the only device connected to the modem. If you are paying extra to rent a router/modem combo, you might save a few bucks by returning it for a standard modem and just using your own wifi router. Now, be sure to go into the router to see exactly what ip subnet it is using. Normally, 192.168.0.x or 192.168.1.x, some companies prefer to use the 10.x.x.x sub nets since they are not commonly used by home routers. Next double check the routers address or the gateway address, normally 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 – now make sure all machines have this as one of the DNS server addresses in the IP networking settings for the connection. The other DNS server can be set to google 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 – you can add more than 2 in the advanced settings if you are so inclined. While in the router settings, make sure there are no blocked ip ranges within your subnet and/or make sure the DHCP server is enabled and if there is a range of ip addresses allowed, that the range is big enough for all your devices including phones, tablets, cameras, etc. if you have some static ip addresses on the network, a printer or NAS maybe, make sure those addresses do not conflict with the range set for DHCP. Now make sure the unseen machine is set to get its ip via dhcp and that the router gateway is one of the dns server addresses. Also, on the unseen machine, make sure it’s host file has not been modified to inadvertently block your home network addresses by directing them to 127.0.0.1.

If if you’ve already done all that, just double check and make sure nothing was missed. I have a win7 desktop primary PC wired to my router with several notebooks on wifi with 2 notebooks upgraded to Win 10. I initially had a problem getting one win 10 to be seen by the primary in the home group. All looked fine but it suddenly appeared and now is fine, I suspect it was fixed in a win 10 patch. As others have mentioned, you can also share via basic networking and can even map drives to folders on other machines on your network if so desired. I’m not sure the benefit of home group over basic network sharing other than it makes folder selection less manual.

anyway, hope I might have hit on something useful.

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Thanks for that, Twn50, that’s very comprehensive. I can’t write too much here except to say I tried most of those except connecting the wired comp to the wireless; sounds good to me and will try it. But alas, I have bigger problems: the new version wiped out everything, emails, utils, the works. When the Level 2 tech rang at 10am (which was really 11.30) all he could say was, try it now and if still no Homegroup, either set one up on this one (I can’t see that working; if the Main can’t even see the others, how can a HG suddenly see them all?) or email them back and a Level 3 tech will take it over. That’s serious, Level 3 techs are just below God. But I don’t think I’ll do that, they have stuffed up my comp enough. I’ll be restoring the gazillion things they’ve deleted over the long w/end. Trouble is, the last time they just deleted all my utils but I still had the folders and at least I knew what to restore. Now, even the folders are gone so I have no idea what else I had lost besides my mind. I also hope the Queen forgives me for working on her b/day.

I’ll keep trying without MS help, I can’t do any worse. I’ll try some of your ideas Twn, ones I hadn’t tried yet and double check those I have.

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I don’t think I’d bother reinstalling all my favorite utilities until I solved the basic operating system and networking problems.
Before investing a lot of time reinstalling my apps, I think I’d consider making an image of what you have (or at least make an image after your programs are again installed).

It sounds like someone (tech) was rather heavy handed when they reinstalled Windows. Did you note what method they used to reinstall Windows? (In other words did they use an ISO file, a flash drive created using the Media Creation Tool, the GWX app, etc.?)

I’d suggest thinking about using the Media Creation Tool and doing an in-place upgrade (also known as a Windows 10 repair install).

Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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Home Built: Windows 10 Home 64-bit, AMD Athlon II X3 435 CPU, 16GB RAM, ASUSTeK M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3 (AM3) motherboard, 512GB SanDisk SSD, 3 TB WD HDD, 1024MB ATI AMD RADEON HD 6450 video, ASUS VE278 (1920x1080) display, ATAPI iHAS224 Optical Drive, integrated Realtek HD Audio

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twn50, my Main is connected to the modem via the wireless router, albeit also via a SONOS bridge which is a unique radio/music system that connects via a bridge setup to connect to a computer. It can only be started via that computer but even when the computer is restarted (or even shut down) the SONOS will keep playing. Once started it can only be turned off via its own shut down on-screen system. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Homegroup or recognizing other computers.

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