Non-existent Computer Preventing Homegroup With Its Own

I have a network where I can't set up sharing and a Homegroup correctly. Win10 and 7 say there is a homegroup already existing, created by laptop_###### that doesn't even exist, and asks if I want to join.

The computer named as starting the homegroup does not exist.
Network has been simplified for the time being to a single router, single subnet on a DSL line rather than 3 routers.
No other devices are within range, so they absolutely aren't connected.
I have no options to leave or delete the homegroup on any of 3 computers.

I've tried all of the help pages I can find available, and I can't seem to find anything that deals with this particular issue.

 

I've had a similar issue over the last few days. Memory of how I finally fixed it is by no means perfect but I believe I disabled the two Homegroup services in one of the computer, first shutting down all the others computers. Then repeated that for each of the others.

I previously used file sharing with no Homegroup but that stopped working. What has caused you to set up a Homegroup?

 

Yup, you got it. As the problem computer is rebooting, the Homegroup it included will no longer be broadcasting, leaving you free to create a new one. At least that's how I had to do it. Unfortunately, even after I set up the Homegroup and had all computers join, I found that there's some kind of issue ... no other computers are visible.

I found a partial solution for this... even though it doesn't make sense to me. I closed Kaspersky IS just to test if it would make any difference. It did, but only partially. After ending Kaspersky, the other computer still wasn't visible, but its media library was... streaming media from Windows Media Player.

I didn't delve into this much because it just wasn't that big of a deal. I just thought it would be nice... to access each other's computers if we needed to... but thinking about it now, it doesn't seem like there should be any firewall rules or any restrictions for a private, home network... computers on the same damn LAN.

 

For many years I used the Advanced Sharing Settings to provide drive mapping and access to shares on all LAN computers and to the printer but that has been giving us lots of problems lately and in the end I was forced to use HomeGroup to get it all working again. But I hate HomeGroup, it's an absolute abortion, and can cause havoc if you restore an image on any of the boxes so this last weekend I set out to get file sharing working again and it has worked. I had to disable the two HomeGroup services on each box and ensure the following services are set to Automatic before rebooting all systems -

DNS Client
Function Discovery Provider Host
Function Discovery Resource Publication
SSDP Discovery
UPnP Device Host

I understand Homegroup is being dropped as of the next Win 10 version and good riddance!!