I have 3 pcs networked and sometimes get a problem where the Network Places does not show the other computers.
Yesterday my laptop got worse and could not see any other PC’s even after reboot etc…
Here is the fix that works:
All PC’s have a Computer Browser (not to be confused with internet browser),
this is how they see the other pc’s on a network.
The problem is where all pc’s are trying to do the same job.
Your main PC should be the only one that has this browser running and the others should have it disabled.
Click start, click run and type in: services.msc and click ok.
Scroll to Computer Browser and double click it.
On the main PC make sure it is running and with auto selected.
Click apply and Ok and close the window.
Then, on all other PC’s on the network, start the same program etc. and click stop (if running) and select disable.
Click apply and Ok and close the window.
After this is setup as above on all pc’s, reboot all pc’s.
When you select Network Places it may take several minutes for the screen to populate with all the pc names, be patient it will now work.
This assumes you already have the PC’s in the same work group.
This is done by right clicking My Computer and selecting computer name.