Windows network browsing, name resolution, permissions and printing issues

Windows network browsing, name resolution, permissions and printing issues

Hi,

I'm trying to configure some network shares on a Windows 10 Home 'server' (version 1709; build 16299.431) and a Windows 8.1 client and am experiencing some issues.

Browsing has never worked, and I subsequently realised that the machines were in different workgroups: the 'server' - which is a new setup to replace a machine running Windows 7 Home Premium. I gave it the same hostname as the old machine ('Eve') for ease of connecting to shares from the client - was in the default workgroup of 'WORKGROUP'; the client ('Lovely') is in a custom workgroup of 'OFFICE'. Despite this, I was under the impression that being in the same workgroup wasn't entirely necessary as of Windows Vista (my last real experience with Windows networking was with Windows XP) as all workgroups are shown when browsing.

When in different workgroups, Lovely is able to browse Eve's shares by entering '\eve' in the address bar, after which Eve appears in the list on the left-hand side under Network.

Browsing Lovely from Eve, however, doesn't work: I get 'Windows cannot access \lovely', 'Unspecified error' and an error code of 0x80004005.

I've changed Eve's workgroup to 'OFFICE' too, which resulted in neither Lovely nor Eve being able to browse each other, both giving that error. I've changed Eve's workgroup back to 'WORKGROUP', given that that was partially working before, but the inability to browse from either machine persists.

The diagnostic tool's detailed information on either machine now gives 'Windows can comunicate with the name resolution server but can't find the host name'.

Given this, I tried using 'nslookup' (as, as far as I'm aware, Windows Samba-networking uses DNS for name resolution these days), which goes to the ISP's DNS servers. Output is of the form:

C:\Users\Caz>nslookup eve
Server:  cache-1.ns.demon.net
Address:  158.152.1.58

*** cache-1.ns.demon.net can't find lovely: Non-existent domain

C:\Users\Caz>

The router is a Linksys WAG54G2 and both Eve and Lovely are in the DHCP table, so I don't understand why the DNS lookups are being sent upstream to the ISP.

A couple of other issues I experienced whilst I was able to connect to Eve from Lovely were to do with a shared printer and attempting to share user Caz's profile folder on Eve.

When printing from Word on Lovely to '\eve\', Word gave 'Windows can't print due to a problem with the printer setup'. I didn't try printing from any other programs (I understand that that is a Word-specific error message), but then the problm seemed to resolve itself without ay action on my part as far as I can remember.

When trying to share Caz's profile folder, 'Choose people to share with' shows 'Caz - Owner', but I also gave 'Everyone' 'full control' under 'Advanced Sharing > Permissions'. I can't remember the exact error message/code I received (but it was to do with permissions) and I obviously can't currently check. The network is set up as a private network on both machines and network discovery and file and printer sharing are on and password-protected sharing is off on both machnes (in preparation to also share Caz's profile folder on Lovely).

Thanks for any help.