Windows 7 homegroup - only get option to create, never to join

[merk]

got two pc's at home both running win7.

When i click on homegroup on either pc, i get the option to create a homegroup, never to join.

Both pc's see each other on the network - they show up under network. but under homegroup they appear to be invisible to each other. Both pc's have IP4 and 6 enabled. both have file/print sharing and network discovery enabled.

I've tried having both of them leave their homegroups, reboot and then creating a homegroup on one of them. The other one still insists there's no homegroup on the network.

Any ideas?

Ian

 

[Mitchell_A]

It's possible your router simply isn't compatible with homegroup, this issue occurs occasionally.
Could you try swapping out your router?

 

[merk]

I'll see what spare router i have laying around. Or i'll remove the router and just plug them into the switch. My network right now is cable model - router - switch

All the pc's are plugged into the switch, which in turn is plugged into the router.

I dont remember the specific model of router i have - i think it's an asus. And it's running a version of dd-wrt.

Would you happen to know if there's a list of routers that are not compatible? I assume the incompatibility is basically a software/firmware issue and not hardware? i.e. if my router has dd-wrt on it, that's where I should check for compatibility issues?

thanks

 

[Trouble]

If both your PCs are plugged into the switch and it is a simple or dumb switch and not a more sophisticated managed type switch then I wouldn't think that the router is an issue. Mitchell is correct some routers don't do well with IPv6 which of course seems to be the backbone of HomeGroups. But it shouldn't be an issue since the actual LAN networking is taking place before the router. Of course that still doesn't help with your issue.

 

[Mitchell_A]

No, unfortunately, there is no list (yet )
I think it's simply a hardware related issue, not firmware.

Post back with your results.

 

[merk]

actually, looks like it is dd-wrt - the version i have installed v24-sp2 does not appear to support IPv6

 

[Mitchell_A]

This may be the culprit.

 

[Trouble]

How could that be an issue when the actual local networking is being done on the switch, scroll up and read post #4

 

[Mitchell_A]

He stated the IPv6 protocol was not supported by his current version of DD-WRT

 

[Trouble]

That's accurate and would be important if his router was actually the switch, but in his second post he said that "My network right now is cable model - router - switch", which lead me to believe that the switch was indeed a seperate device and therefore the router running DD-WRT not withstanding would not be a factor....If I misunderstood and he is actually using the router based switch ports, then I apologize, since your earlier remarks were accurate

 

[merk]

How could that be an issue when the actual local networking is being done on the switch, scroll up and read post #4

Wouldn't my router still have to support IPv6 even if the pc's were plugged into the switch? I'll also have to double check when i get home to make sure both PC's are plugged into the switch and that one of them isn't plugged into the router.

thanks

 

[merk]

That's accurate and would be important if his router was actually the switch, but in his second post he said that "My network right now is cable model - router - switch", which lead me to believe that the switch was indeed a seperate device and therefore the router running DD-WRT not withstanding would not be a factor....If I misunderstood and he is actually using the router based switch ports, then I apologize, since your earlier remarks were accurate

I do have a separate switch. I'm going to double check the connections though when i get home to make sure both PC's are plugged into the switch. (and to make sure it's a switch and not a hub).

 

[Mitchell_A]

Probably not, as your homegroup is simply "over-network"

 

[merk]

Hmm - well i will double check everything when i home just to make sure i'm not mis-remembering how i have everything set up. I'll probably try upgrading the firmware on my router anyhow since it looks like they have an newer release.

I can RDP into my desktop at home and under the network status for IPv6 there's 'no network access'

man i am slow today - of course it's not going to work even if it's in a switch since i never assigned an IPv6 address to either machine and obviously DHCP isn't going to assign it if the router doesn't support IPv6. It does have an IPv6 link local address - i'm not sure what link-local refers to though. I suppose i can try pinging the IP6 address of each computer when i get home and see if i get a response.

 

[Mitchell_A]

Best of luck

 

[ownedandout]

Hey, what anti virus are you using, because if you are using AVG free 9.0 it has problems with homegroup and can make it not consistent. You'd think you'd need AVG firewall installed for AVG to be the problem but I had a similar problem to yours and as soon as I uninstalled AVG free everything worked.

Hope this helps.

 

[merk]

I wouldn't have thought to check the AV program. Although in my case I'm using avast.

I'm pretty sure at this point IPv6 is the issue. I'll either need to upgrade my router to a newer firmware which supports it, or i think i can just assign a static IPv6 address to both PC's and that should solve it. Now i just have to look up what the equivalent 192.168.x.x address is for IPv6

 

[Trouble]

I'm not absolutely positive, but I think that Microsoft's APIPA, will probably auto assign a IPv6 address. See attachment

 

[merk]

I have link-local with an IPv6 address as well in my network settings. But it also says there's no network access for IPv6.

Is it possible the switch is the problem? I don't know the specific details of how a switch works so i'm not sure if it's something which would need to specifically support IPv6

When i get home I'll try pinging each pc using that link-local address. I can at least ping the loop back address ::1 successfully, so internally at least it looks like the IPv6 networking is working. I can also ping the link-local address. When i get home I'll run the same tests on the 2nd pc as well as seeing if they can ping each other using that address.

 

[Trouble]

Could you tell me where you're seeing the "no network access for IPv6" information. That's just for me, I kinda want to know. I've used some pretty old and archaic, legacy router/switch combinations and haven't had the homegroup issues that you've described, so I'm learning as much from this thread as you.
As far as how a switch works, if it's a simple unmanaged switch, it works basically the same as a hub, except the individual switch ports are autonomous, the switch keeps a table and knows which IP address reside on which port so the speed is faster, since every node on the network doesn't have to look at each packet to see if it's for them before passing it on like occurs on a hub network.