Sudden network issues between two Win10 machines

Greetings all.

I have two computers both running Win10 Pro on my home network. One computer is named FS-COMP (Gigabyte) and the other is named Gauges (Asus). They are both home built and work well. I have several shared locations on both FS-COMP and Gauges and all shared locations were accessible without issue on each computer until a week ago. The event that seemed to trigger the problem was putting a powered USB 3.0 PCIE card into FS-COMP, but I can’t imagine why. The PCIE card loaded the same drivers as other USB HID’s in Device Manager. I removed it as it did not solve a USB problem I was having with a piece of flight sim hardware.

The Issue:

On FS-COMP: Via Windows Explorer, \\Gauges shows on the network and all \\Gauges shared locations are selectable via FS-COMP.

On Gauges: Via Windows Explorer, \\FS-COMP shows on the network but shared location are not accessible by selecting \\FS-COMP. I have attached a a snip from the web. The names are not the same but the Network Error is. It would read Windows cannot access \\FS-COMP

However, if I type the \\FS-COMP network location into Windows Explorer as \\192.168.1.14 then that location shows on the network And I Can access shared \\FS-COMP locations via the \\192.168.1.14.

So, \\Gauges can access \\FS-COMP via \\192.168.1.14 but cannot access \\FS-COMP via the \\FS-COMP icon that shows in the network section of Windows Explorer. There appears to be a name resolution problem but I can’t identify it. I have been through all the standard debugging steps without luck (drive sharing, permissions, network discovery etc etc.)

I would be very thankful for any suggestions. Thanks. Bruce

My problem is solved thanks to a kind fellow at the hangar45.net forum. He suggested the issue was with the Lmhost file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.

I first looked at the Host file in the same location as Lmhost and both computers were listed in the file, however, the IP address for FS-Comp was wrong. I can only guess that for some reason a couple weeks ago FS-Comp was dynamically allocated a new LAN address (didn't have a fixed IP) and that’s when things came to a screeching halt. So I deleted all my router fixed ip’s (I do run in dhcp mode) and re-added them with the correct names and addresses. Then I changed one digit in the FS-Comp DNS address in the Host file and I was instantly up and running. Both computers talking, WideFS connected and the JET45 gauges were up and running.

Of all the postings I made about the issue, and after reading countless articles and trying the same old things over and over, this simple and elegant fix did the job. I would have never figured it out.

Bruce