RonCo

Thanks RandyL. SUCCESS! You are correct in that the new laptop came bundled with McAfee antivirus software but disabling their firewall didn't seem to make any difference. On the PC, I disabled Norton firewall and went through your list. The only new thing really was at steps 7 and 8. And I now have access via the laptop - even with Norton firewall back on. However, on the laptop I'm getting access via 'Network' in Windows Explorer. The PC is shown there and clicking on that brings up a 'd' drive, 'users' and 'my docs' and the latter gives me full access to my files. I've opened a couple and resaved and all seems to work perfectly. I don't know if this is a Windows 8 thing or not but the Homegroup still doesn't work and I still can't track down 'workgroup' on the laptop. But hey-ho! I have access to files via the laptop which is what I wanted. Problem solved. Many thanks for your help.

Thanks Randy. Thats a helpful article but looks to be written for Windows 7 users networking with older versions of Windows. I've changed my Windows 7 pc to work group but the Windows 8 laptop Network & Sharing Centre shows Private network with no option to change. I'll research a bit more on the Microsoft website.

Hi Hope you can help with a homegroup problem. I have a PC running Windows 7 Home Premium and have just bought a new laptop running Windows 8, which I’m still getting used to so that might be part of my problem. Anyway, the intention is to keep the PC as the main computer but access files from the laptop and save back to the PC, ie use the PC as a PC and as a file server. I thought homegroup would do that for me – but not so far! Homegroup was set up on the PC (although not used) so I had the laptop join the homegroup. On Windows Explorer both computers showed the other under Homegroup but I couldn’t access the files from the laptop – “..PC .. denying access to your pc ..” I have user names and passwords switched off, network discovery switched on and marked the My Docs folder on the PC as able to be shared by anyone. No luck. I have now removed both computers from the homegroup and set up a new one. Both computers say they are in a homegroup but both say that no other computers are currently available. Both have the same password. In Windows Explorer no other computer is shown under Homegroup on either machine. I am a computer user and not an IT expert. I’m also retired so would welcome simple help if anyone can advise what I am doing wrong. I believe there may be software options available but these seem more about business sharing over the internet rather than sharing over a private network. Thanks