I am having very frustrating problems with a local network. It is in a small home office with a DLink Dir825 router connecting 2-3 computers much of the time, two network drives (Thecus N7700PRO and Synology DS211j), and two networked printers. For some reason, when I go to Windows Explorer and expand the network, nothing appears When I map the network under the Network and Sharing Center, then I see my computer, the router, and the Internet, but no other devices.
I can generally reach the NAS devices if I type their name or IP address into the Explorer search bar, e.g. \N7700PRO. I can also usually reach their web consoles manually by typing, for example, http://n7700PRO in the web browser. So they are there, just not being discovered.
When I work with a network drive manually for a while, the devices suddenly appear. For example, I was doing some program installs a few days ago, and making full image backups with Acronis between installs for safety. By the way, Acronis did not initially see the devices either. To get Acronis to back up to my N7700PRO the first time, I had to type the full path, e.g. \n7700PRObackupAconisFoldernamefile name.tib in the file name window. Once this was done, Acronis let me incrementally update the image backup by selecting update. (Acronis 2011) However, I noticed that after a few such backups, I went back to Windows Explorer and now not just the N7700PRO but also the DS211j and another Win XP computer were showing up. They continued to show up through a few reboots, but when I turned off the computers (the other devices run all the time) the next morning, all the devices were missing again. I have seem them come and go before, but I am not quite sure of the sequence of events that cause the change.
I went into the Advanced Settings for Network and Sharing, and made sure that network discovery, file and folder sharing, and public folder sharing are all enabled. I enabled 56 bit encription and turned off password protected sharing. I even disabled home networks by selecting to use passwords under home networks. I don’t know what else to try. I checked Windows Firewall settings, and all the rules labeled Network Discovery are enabled for private networks (not domain). I also checked to make sure my router and network drives and computers all indicate “Workgroup” as their network domain or workgroup. I also checked that no credentials are stored in Windows that might have gotten corrupted.
Any suggestions? It appears as if some service is not getting engaged most of the time. I guess I could formally map the network drives to my different computers, and presumably Windows would search for them explicitly each time it connects. But that is really not what I prefer. My Win XP computer does not seem to have the issues. However, it also seems to remember devices it saw before and list them when the network is expanded even if they are not currently on line. Win 7 seems to check and only list devices it sees when you expand the network. So there may be similar issues just appearing differently.
Thanks. I am hoping some of the more experienced people here have a suggestion.
