Issues connecting a wireless laptop to a homegroup?

[blakemckenna]

I have a Desktop PC running Windows 10 that is hard-wired to my modem/router. I also have a printer that is connected directly to the Desktop. I have a wireless Microsoft Surface Laptop that is running Windows 10 also. I created a HomeGroup on the Desktop and now I wish to add the Laptop to the HomeGroup. So far, this isn't working. When I try to add the Laptop, there is no "Join Now" button or link in the HomeGroup Window. Does my Laptop have to be hard-wired to the modem/router first in order to add it the HomeGroup? I've never done this before so I'm kinda lost. The Microsoft documentation hasn't been very helpful.

Thanks

 

[topshot]

Perhaps because they are deprecating Homegroup in Win 10. You might want to try a different method of sharing the printer.

 

[blakemckenna]

Unfortunately this did not work. Is there any other ways of sharing files and printers on a Home network?

 

[passel]

You're saying you followed the Files and Printers in Win 10 procedures and they didn't work for you?
In particular, turning on Network Discovery and enabling File and Printer sharing.

 

[blakemckenna]

That is correct? Does my laptop need to be hard-wired to the Modem/Router in order to attach to the HomeGroup? If so, is there even a USB/RJ245 cable out there?

 

[topshot]

No need to hard wire. It just needs to be on the same network. It's kind of annoying MS just put a link to a web search instead of directly to something on their own site. WTH?

Anyways, I've never used homegroups for sharing and ironically enough I shared a printer connected to a Win 10 PC easier with a Win 7 laptop than another Win 10 laptop. I don't even know what I did to eventually get it to work. I just tried it again the next day and it worked.

And as an added bonus, it wipes out the shared printer connection when Win 10 updates. Thanks, MS!

 

[blakemckenna]

Thanks topshot...I guess I'll just keep playing around with it and see what happens. Maybe I'll get lucky too!

 

[jmcilhinney]

I've never had the inclination to investigate further but I have had issues with HomeGroups between wired and wireless clients too. Sometimes it has worked to begin with but I always end up in the situation where my multiple wireless devices can see each other but the wired and wireless clients can't. Given that HomeGroup has been deprecated, I doubt that we'll see this issue resolved.

 

[blakemckenna]

Since it has been deprecated, have you heard what will take it's place? Just curious...

 

[jmcilhinney]

Since it has been deprecated, have you heard what will take it's place? Just curious...

I don't think that there are any plans to replace it directly. My guess is that Microsoft figure that with the issues HomeGroup had and the prevalence of cloud storage and NAS devices, it's just not worth the trouble.

 

[2kaud]

What's the ip address of the desktop and the laptop - are they on the same sub-net? is the DHCP server issuing different sub-net IP addresses to wired and wireless devices?

 

[blakemckenna]

I'm not a network guy so how do I find this out?

 

[passel]

Generally, I open a cmd window and type ipconfig.
You'll probably have several adapters show up. Most likely your IP addresses from the router will be 192.168.x.y , x usually being a low number like 1 or 2.
On the wired computer the adapter may be identified as local Connection. On the laptop, you're looking for the Wireless adapther.

Once you know the Ip address of the "other" machine, in the same command window you can use Ping to see if you can get a response from other machine, for example if one machine shows up as 192.168.2.5 and the other as 192.168.2.6, then in the cmd window on the 192.168.2.5 machine you can do

ping 192.168.2.6

And if the remote machine is not setup to ignore ping requests, you should get a response. By default, on windows boxes, I believe four pings are sent out and you would expect four responses, and some statistics would be printed, e.g. round trip time in milliseconds.

 

[jdc2000]

If the printer is connected to your networked computer, you may want to make sure that the computer has a static IP address assigned to it to simplify connections (so it never changes).

Most of my printers have network interfaces and are connected directly to the network (wired), and those all have static IP addresses also.

 

[blakemckenna]

Thanks guys, I'll look into this more...