Two windows 7 machines can't see each other on the network

Question

I have a desktop, and i just got a netbook. both run windows 7 home premium.

when i go to Network, on either device, the other one isn't visible. neither can detect the homegroup of the other. I live in the UK, but i bought my netbook from the US - as such it came with all US regional settings. i read that they couldn't network if they had different settings - eg different system time - so i went around ensuring they were all the same.

the desktop appeared on my netbook, but not vice versa, and now they're both off again. the netbook is connected over wifi. it seems really silly - i've got them sharing a mouse and keyboard with synergy, but they cant share files!

anyone had a similar experience of have any ideas? i'm really confused! i would have though two win7 machines would be one of the easiest combinations to get to play nice..

P.S. i have made sure discovery is turned on it network settings.

Answer 1

Maybe Network discovery is off. Check this steps
If you run(Win+R) \\computerip or \\computername it works?

Answer 2

I am not completely sure, if I encouter such problems i just play along till it works. But some things you could do:

-put both computers in the same Homegroup

-ensure they use (if not DHCP) the same kind of IP-Adress expt the last numbers eg 192.168.0.xxx

-turn off the windows firewall and any other firewall, if this solves the problem you have add some exceptions to the firewall.