The Mystery of the missing network PC

[TheEnglishGasMan]

Hello clever people and fellow LTT fans! 

 

I recently upgraded to a wired home network after years of terrible WiFi and could not be happier, it was a great decision. I'm a life-long PC and computing enthusiast, unfortunately my skills are restricted to custom watercooling and MS excel formulas. Oh and now running ethernet cable through walls it seems. 

 

I was therefore pretty pleased that after getting the wiring setup through the walls - it was simply a job of plugging the cat6 cables into the ethernet ports on my machines, plugging the other ends into the router, sharing the drives and hey presto - a home network with consistent speeds double what I was getting on WiFi. Beautiful.  

 

I have 4 machines in my house and have them connected directly to the routers 4 ethernet ports (sans a switch); 

 

• PC #01 - HTPC / File Server 
• PC #02 - Gaming System
• PC #03 - Work System
• PC #04 - Arcade Cabinet

All 4 machines have no issues individually when it comes to network or internet connectivity, the issue is PC #02 is only visible to itself on the network, I cannot see it or access it from any other machine. I can access all other machines from each other without issue. 

 

I do try and address my technical issues myself first before asking for help, however I either can't find the exact FAQ or similar example I'm looking for or it's simply beyond my capability. Either way I'm stuck. 

 

Below is what I've done so far :

 

• Changing all cables around
• Resetting router / modem
• Upgraded firmware 
• Password protected / unprotected drive sharing
• Played with SMB1.0/CIFS File Sharing settings across the machines (at one point I actually lost visibility of multiple machines playing with this feature but always restored back). 

 

The only other thing I can add is that the machines are not all running the same version of Windows - PC's 1, 3 and 4 are all Windows 10 Pro Build 18363 where as PC 2 - the PC I'm having the issue with is running Windows 10 Home Build 18362. I noticed when playing with the CIFS File Sharing settings that by default, PC's 1, 3 and 4 are running SMB Direct where PC 2 is running SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support. Guessed this was related to Windows version but not sure it makes a difference. 

 

Any support that can be rendered will be greatly appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

The Gas Man

[Electronics Wizardy]

Can you ping the others systems on the network from the gaming pc?

 

Leave smb v1 off, its a big security hole.

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Is the network type set to private or public on the machine that cannot be seen?  Public will have the firewall block SMB traffic and Windows has a nasty habit of changing the setting if you so much as fart in the direction of the router, causing it to think its a new network.

[beersykins]

Did you choose 'yes' for network discovery when adding it to the network?

 

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-configure-network-discovery-windows-10-0

[TheEnglishGasMan]

Please see my replies below : 

 

15 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Can you ping the others systems on the network from the gaming pc?

 

Leave smb v1 off, its a big security hole.

 

I can ping all machines on the network from each other, i.e. PC 1 can ping 4, and 4 can ping 3 and so on. No issues.

PC #02 can also ping the other machines and be pinged itself. 0% Loss.

 

PC#02 is just not visible as a computer on the network in the File Explorer Network devices. 

 

Thanks for advice on SMB1.0! 

 

14 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Is the network type set to private or public on the machine that cannot be seen?  Public will have the firewall block SMB traffic and Windows has a nasty habit of changing the setting if you so much as fart in the direction of the router, causing it to think its a new network.

 

Thanks for your reply. All 4 machines are set to Private networks. 

 

As the pings are successful - is there anyway I can manually map it? 

Not sure if this helps but I've also noticed that while in the Network devices in File Explorer; there is a difference in which machines can see which. 

 

 

• PC 1 can see PC 3 & 4 as computers in the Network (2 Total)
• PC 2 can see itself and the other 3 PCs as computers in the Network. (4 Total)
• PC 3 can see PC 1 & 4 as computers in the network (2 Total).
• PC 4 can see PC 1 & 3 as computers in the network (2 Total).

Not sure again if this is of any relevance.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, TheEnglishGasMan said:

As the pings are successful - is there anyway I can manually map it? 

Not sure if this helps but I've also noticed that while in the Network devices in File Explorer; there is a difference in which machines can see which. 

Try to map the drive, under expelorer, you can go map network drive. 

 

I have a lot of weird issues with some systems just not showing on network exploror, so I just always map network drives.

[Jinu]

1. Ensure that all PCs are in the same workgroup or domain. 

2. Ensure that all PCs have their network connection in Private mode. If any are in public mode then they will not see machines in private mode. To check this click on the network icon and go to 'Network and Internet settings" in that click on Change Connection properties. Do this for each PC

[TheEnglishGasMan]

On 4/20/2020 at 10:55 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Try to map the drive, under expelorer, you can go map network drive. 

 

I have a lot of weird issues with some systems just not showing on network exploror, so I just always map network drives.

I have tried to Map the drives of the missing network PC on PC's 1, 3 and 4.

 

Obviously, as the machine is not visible on the network - I'm not able to select it from the prompted network devices drop down list.

 

Entering the drive location manually of the missing PC -  \\Desktop-XXXXXX\d and hitting enter. I now see the drive in the list of network locations but when trying to access it I'm prompted with a Network error :

 

"Windows cannot access \\Desktop-XXXXX\d

You do not have permission to access \\Desktop-XXXXX\d\. Contact your network administrator to request access"

 

The desktop I'm trying to access is not password protected and I have full control access granted for the mentioned drive. 

 

On 4/20/2020 at 11:59 PM, Jinu said:

1. Ensure that all PCs are in the same workgroup or domain. 

2. Ensure that all PCs have their network connection in Private mode. If any are in public mode then they will not see machines in private mode. To check this click on the network icon and go to 'Network and Internet settings" in that click on Change Connection properties. Do this for each PC

1. All PC's are in the same workgroup called "WORKGROUP". Network ID option is greyed out for all 4 PCs. 

2. All PC's have their network connection in Private Mode. 

 

Could it be firewall related? 

 

Thank you for your replies

 

Regards,

The Gas Man 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, TheEnglishGasMan said:

The desktop I'm trying to access is not password protected and I have full control access granted for the mentioned drive. 

try setting. password on thata system, I think it has issues with blank passwords.

 

1 hour ago, TheEnglishGasMan said:

 

Could it be firewall related? 

Don't think so seeing how it tries to connect.

[TheEnglishGasMan]

Thanks for all the suggestions to those who replied.

 

I couldn't get any of your suggestions to work unfortunately and decided to go nuclear.

 

I formatted PC#02 and installed Windows Pro on it, the same build as the other three machines. Almost instantly after booting - all devices are now visible across the network and to each other. 

 

This is now resolved.