How to See Libraries in Home Sharing?

[Mark Zimmer]

I'm using two PCs, both on the same home network. Both are running, both have iTunes running. I've turned on and turned off and turned on home sharing on both PCs, but neither one sees the other's library. Bonjour is running on both. I've followed all the troubleshooting steps (yes, my computer is on) and no joy. Any ideas as to what's going on here?

 

Thanks.

[kirkmc]

No parental controls? No firewall software? Both signed into the same Apple ID?

[Mark Zimmer]

No parental controls.

Windows Firewall only; both iTunes and Bonjour are configured as exceptions to be allowed through the firewall.

Both signed into same Apple ID

Both running as Administrator

 

I'm stumped.

[kirkmc]

Me too. I've never not seen mine.

 

Are both computers set to DHCP in network settings? You're sure that one isn't on a different wifi network...?

[Mark Zimmer]

All on same wifi network.

I'm not sure how/where to check network settings for DHCP (using Windows 10).

Double checked, both computers have file sharing enabled too.

[kirkmc]

File Sharing has nothing to do with it. I don't know where network settings are. I suspect it has something to do with your router, but this is very hard to diagnose.

[Mark Zimmer]

I don't know what happened to make it work, but after the Windows 10 Creator Update, I now can see the other libraries and share files back and forth. So a happy ending, though I'm not entirely certain why or whether it's reproducible.

[kirkmc]

Are you sure they're on the same network? A correspondent had the same problem last week, and it turned out that since his router also has a guest network, some of his devices had connected to that. 

[Mark Zimmer]

Yeah, you're probably right. It's not working again. Guest network is shut off, though, so that's not it. Both on same SSID of the wireless network. No idea where to go from here. I tried factory reset of the router and that didn't help. Weird that it would briefly work and then stop again; there must be something preventing a proper connection but it's beyond my pay grade.

[kirkmc]

Yes, I mentioned the problems troubleshooting Home Sharing in an article on Macworld this week:

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/3205814/networking/the-problems-with-troubleshooting-apple-s-home-sharing.html

[Mark Zimmer]

Well, I got it working again after about eight hours of putzing. The guest network reference was an important clue that my machines weren't really on the same network. For future reference, on two Windows 10 computers, the following worked for me:

 

It turned out for some reason there were duplicate network profiles in the registries, which in essence meant that although they were on the same SSID they were in fact running separate networks and couldn't see each other unless they happened to land on the same network profile at once. So to get rid of those duplicates, on each computer (but only if you're comfortable editing your registry!):

 

1. Open a Run dialog (Win+R) and type regedit, then Enter. Or simply go to the search box and type regedit, then Enter.

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ NetworkList\ Profiles

3. Double click on Profiles or click on the left arrow to expand it.

 

4. Click one by one on the profiles contained in that folder to see which ones are the duplicates, and *carefully* delete them one by one from the registry (using the Delete key). Or if one of them keeps returning on you, just delete each and every one so you have none at all, and start with a clean slate. I had to do that on my desktop, though I was able to just delete the bad ones on my laptop. Why? I dunno. But be very careful; messing with the registry can easily brick your computer.

 

Close regedit, and connect to the network. It then should be the basic network without a suffix on both machines, and that should get them back to being on the same network.  Might need to reboot. Click properties on both connections to make sure they're discoverable on the network--it probably will reset itself to  be NOT discoverable since it assumes this new network it found is a public one.

 

Open iTunes on both computers; if it's still not sharing properly, then shut off Home Sharing on each iTunes and then turn it back on. Boom! Shared libraries!

 

Maddening, but I finally got there other than by accident. I hope it stays.

[kirkmc]

I'm so glad I don't use Windows...