Can't see Win8.1 machine anymore

Mark Phelps · 18 Feb 2016

I've converted three different machines to Win10, and before the conversion, all three could see a Win8.1 tower PC that I used a data storage machine.

Now, after the conversion, only two of the machines can network to the tower PC.

The HP laptop, which I converted most recently, can not even see the tower PC in the list of networked devices.

I don't use HomeGroups, so I disabled the associated services on all three PCs. I also confirmed that all three PCs use the same named WorkGroup.

Of the three Win10 PCs, two are running Home and one is running Pro, but the Home desktop sees the Tower PC, the Home laptop does not.

I regularly use the network connection to do backups of the three PCs to the Tower PC, and even though the wireless is slower, it's till faster than copying the backup image file to a USB stick and then reading that in the Tower PC. So, I would like to continue to use the network connection.

The laptop connects to the Internet just fine, so it's not a general networking problem.

Don't really want to have to restore the laptop to Win7 because of this small problem.

But ... I'm at a loss what to try at this point.

philc43 · 18 Feb 2016

It is possible that this has to do with "Master Browser" settings for networked devices. If you Google this you will see that W10 has a problem in finding network PC or devices if it is not the master browser on the network. Whether or not your PC is the Master Browser depends on if it was the first device powered up or if other devices have been turned off that were previously assigned as the Master Browser on the network.

You can check the devices on your network as follows:

1.Open up a command prompt
2.Type net view and hit enter
3.Look at the list of computer names. These are the computers on your LAN. Note that the format is \\COMPUTER-NAME
4.For each name in the list, type the following command: nbtstat -a COMPUTER-NAME

One of the results from the nbtstat commands will show a row with “_MSBROWSE_” in it. That means that this computer is the Master Browser.

Check to see if that PC sees the Tower PC. You can change the order in which you turn on PCs and laptops to influence which is the master browser which is a workaround until MS fix the problem.

philc43 · 18 Feb 2016

If your problem does turn out to be this Master Browser effect there are some on these forums who have applied the following workaround until MS fixes it.

See: Windows 10 1511 Network Browsing Issue and especially post #52

Mark Phelps · 18 Feb 2016

Philc43: Thanks. I will give these commands a try and see what happens.

UPDATE: That didn't go well. I tried the commands from my desktop (this PC) and saw the results that this PC was the Master browser (as I expected).

So, I turned off this PC, booted the laptop, and when I entered the new view command, I got an error 1230.

So ... I Googled that and the error claims that the Client for Microsoft Networking function is not installed, and when I went into Setting and looked at the properties for the wired network adapter, both the Install and Uninstall buttons were there in the window. I clicked Install, selected the Client -- and nothing was listed but it wants the source.

Plus, when I went into Device Manager and looked at the details of the wired network device, while is says the device is working properly, the Events tab says the device ... requires further installation.

So, I guess now, I have to track down drivers for the Realtek NIC and install them.

UPDATE2: OK, installed new RealTek 8168 drivers and the net view command works now. But, I still can't see the file server tower PC. So, I'll turn off my desktop, reboot the laptop and see what happens.

OK, rebooted, and NOW, see all the PCs when I do net view, and I can see and access the tower PC,

But, since reinstalling the Realtek drivers, I no longer get any network icon in the taskbar ...

UPDATE3: This is ridiculous!!! The network icon was greyed out in Notifcations, do I did a winsock reset -- and after the reboot, the icon is back. But NOW, the net view doesn't show any networked devices anymore! So, I'm back to square one!! I'm going to retry the sc.exe config commands that were shown in the linked thread. If those don't work, I'm going to reconfigure this PC to dual-boot with the original Win7 install. And if THAT sees the tower PC OK, I may just scrap Win10 from this PC.

UPDATE4: OK, restored Win7, booted into it, and can see the other PCs on the network. So, I rebooted, this time, into Win10 -- and NOW, can see the other PCs on the network!

Don't ask me to explain this -- I can't!