Cannot connect to laptop with Homegroup

I know this is a tired subject but I've tried everything I can think of.

Background:
I have two computers: a Lenovo X220 laptop and a desktop i7, both are running Win 7 64 bit SP1. When I received my laptop two months ago, I set up a Homegroup with no problems. I could share files back and forth between my i7 desktop and the X220. I use GoodSync to keep the two computers in sync and it also ran fine.

Now the plot thickens. Two things happened a week ago: I installed a massive Win 7 update and I upgraded to the latest level of GoodSync. I believe I remember that sync'ing was up and running and when I received the notice of an update to GoodSync, I canceled the sync and downloaded the updated version - that's when the problems started.

The current situation is that from the laptop I can see the i7 desktop over the Homegroup network but the i7 cannot see the laptop.

Tried to date:
1 - Unjoined the X220 from Homegroup, and rejoined by entering the passcode displayed on the i7 screen in Homegroup settings (no joy)
2 - Turned off Norton Internet Security 2011 (firewall, all settings). No change.
3 - Ensured the IPv6 was on. Also tried turning it off. Both settings failed to change anything. It's currently on.
4 - Ensured discovery mode was turned on on both computers, no change.
5 - ran fsc /scannow. It found a problem, fixed it and I ran it again - no further problems but I still cannot connect to X220 from the i7.
6 - In running the Homegroup diagnostic, it runs the network diagnostic instead saying that it appears not to be a Homegroup problem. The end error message from the network diagnostic is, "Your computer appears to be correctly configured but the device resource (X220) is not responding". And offers to direct me to further options (to no avail).
7 - Sharing is set to Everyone with full control (read/write) on all Library folders on the X220
8 - Tried a direct LAN connection (hardwire) instead of the wireless connection, no change.
9 - Password protected sharing is turned off on both computers.

Through all of this, the X220 can read and write to the shared folders on the i7 desktop but the i7 does not see the X220.

Any suggestions for a fix would be appreciated.

 

One additional observation:
The X220 is listed under Network in Windows Explorer on the i7 (along with i7 itself). But clicking on X220 results in the error message:

"Windows cannot access \\X220. Check the spellling of the name. Otherwise there might be a problem with your network. To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose" In the Details tab, the message reads, "Error code 0x80070035. The network path was not found".

Clicking on the Diagnose button results in the error message:

"Make sure your device is turned on and connected to the network. Windows can't find "X220". If the computer or device you are trying to reach is nearby, make sure it is turned on and connected to the network. Otherwise, contact your network administrator for assistance"

Of course, all this time I can access the i7 shared folders through my X220 laptop using Homegroup. This seems to be a one-way problem.

 

hey Bob423,

you may want to try uninstalling Norton completely from both pcs.
then power down/power up both pcs.

 

techsent,

I may try that yet. I have the exact same NIS2011 installed in both the laptop and the desktop and yet it is only the desktop that has the problem, strange.

 

I gave up on this. I had been using GoodSync to sync folders between the laptop and desktop but that failed when the desktop would not see the laptop. I had several conversations with GoodSync but to no avail. I later found out that I couldn't even ping the laptop from the desktop. I also did a restore from a time period when everything was fine and both computers could see each other but after the restore, I still could not see the laptop from the desktop - so I reversed the restore.

This is where I gave up and installed Windows Live Mesh which was able to see both computers and perform a sync between them - plus I get 25Gb cloud storage to use too.

So I've now uninstalled GoodSync and I can sync with Live Mesh, good enough for me.