Unable to see Win7.1 shares

Although I'm able to see my desktop computer in the network folder of my laptop I can't open it to see any of the shares!

My desktop is a Win 7.1 Ultimate system fully up to date. My laptop was a Win 8.1 system and had no problems networking with the desktop. I've now upgraded the laptop to Win 10 Pro, and subsequently done a clean install as well. BIOS and drivers are all up to date. I can no longer see the shares on the desktop.

Networking, on both machines, are set so that network discovery is on, file and printer sharing are on, public folder sharing is on, 128-bit encryption is on, password protected sharing is on and use user accounts and passwords is on. User name and password is the same on both machines. I've also put an entry in credentials manager on the laptop for access to the desktop. AND still I can't see the shares on the desktop.

So I switched on Homegroup and went through the various settings with no improvement.

Has anyone got any ideas how I can get access to my desktop from my laptop?

P.S. I've put the same question on the Microsoft forum.

I've given up! Did a fresh install of Win10 on the laptop and all is now working.

You gave up early. I can assure you that win 10 can access shares but it is a bit more picky on security but that is not a problem for you anymore!

I spoke too soon. Having been able to share files/folders for a whole day and having been able to sync about 100Gb of data it stopped working. I was unable to fix it for two days so am now on my second re-install of Win10. I'm just now trying to get the 2 machines (Win10 and Win7.1) to share with only using Ethernet, no access to internet and firewalls switched off. I'll then start eliminating individual elements unitl it stops working again at which point I'll, hopefully, have identified the failing component.

philipW99 said:

I spoke too soon. Having been able to share files/folders for a whole day and having been able to sync about 100Gb of data it stopped working. I was unable to fix it for two days so am now on my second re-install of Win10. I'm just now trying to get the 2 machines (Win10 and Win7.1) to share with only using Ethernet, no access to internet and firewalls switched off. I'll then start eliminating individual elements unitl it stops working again at which point I'll, hopefully, have identified the failing component.

Are you logging on to the WIn10 Laptop with a local or ms account?

I'm logging on as a local account. My first time around I found that I had inadvertently converted to an MS Account and couldn't convert back. Hence the first need to re-install Win10.

Sorry but I'm having a similar issue now

If I watch a movie on a NAS device, after 10-15 mins, I lose connection to that NAS location. Never seen this before and has worked fine until today.... (This is playing via a Win 7 pc with MyMovies installed on a Win 10 PC and the movie located on a NAS)

UKMedia

At the moment I've got networking working between the two machines. (I hate saying that as I think its tempting fate!).

I did a fresh install of Win10 Pro and setup a local account. I then installed all available updates. Then I installed all the Dell driver updates that were recommended for Win10 - its a Dell laptop XPS15-9530. I then tried networking via a router with Ethernet cables only. This worked, even without playing with firewall settings. Then I switched one machine over to WiFi networking and then the other. All is still working. One thing of note is that the Ethernet network setup on the Laptop (Win10) was automatically set as public. Even though the WiFi and Ethernet networks on the Desktop were set as private the two machines communicated without any troubles. I did eventually manage to change the Ethernet network on the laptop to private but it wasn't easy.

At this stage I don't know how I got it working or why it wasn't working previously. I'm just hoping that it'll keep working. If I find out anything pertinent I'll post back here.

philipW99 said:

At the moment I've got networking working between the two machines. (I hate saying that as I think its tempting fate!).

I did a fresh install of Win10 Pro and setup a local account. I then installed all available updates. Then I installed all the Dell driver updates that were recommended for Win10 - its a Dell laptop XPS15-9530. I then tried networking via a router with Ethernet cables only. This worked, even without playing with firewall settings. Then I switched one machine over to WiFi networking and then the other. All is still working. One thing of note is that the Ethernet network setup on the Laptop (Win10) was automatically set as public. Even though the WiFi and Ethernet networks on the Desktop were set as private the two machines communicated without any troubles. I did eventually manage to change the Ethernet network on the laptop to private but it wasn't easy.

At this stage I don't know how I got it working or why it wasn't working previously. I'm just hoping that it'll keep working. If I find out anything pertinent I'll post back here.

I think we may be looking at the wrong place! I now suspect that it is the Win7 PC that has the issue, when the symptoms occur, the Win7 Network icon in the notification area has a warning ! against it. As I've just upgraded to Win10, I had assumed that to be the location of the fault. Checking update history now.

If you've got a warning against the network icon on the Win7 machine it may well be that there's something wrong with your adapter or your router isn't connected to the internet. You may know all that already.

For me, I'm thoroughly confused. Having got it working yesterday evening I started up the two machines this morning and was unable to connect the two. I was using WifI. So, I switched both machines to cable connections and they started talking to each other. I then switched each machine back to WiFi and they continued to work. For a while. After a while they appeared to lose connection again so I did the trick with cable connection on a single machine and, voila, they were working again.

My conclusion was that there may be something about the wireless adapters that is amiss. So, I've upgraded the drivers for the wireless adapter on my desktop (Netgear A6210 attached via USB. There was a new driver version released a couple of days ago) and on the laptop (Intel AC-7260). As of now, as I type, I've got the machines talking to each other. We'll see how long that lasts.

Despite having upgraded the drives for the network adapters I don't really think that's the problem. There's got to be something in the software that's amiss. There are a number of people over on MS community that are suffering the same or similar problems of which I imagine MS might have to take notice.