Windows 7 PC cannot see some LAN PCs, but can access them via path

Posted by zoot on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by zoot
Published on 2013-12-06T10:27:59Z Indexed on 2014/06/12 3:27 UTC
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In an office LAN, with Windows 7 Professional workstations and a FreeNAS Samba server, 2 workstations have intermittent problems in browsing for the other workstations, as well as the FreeNAS server.

However, so far, it appears that typing in the path to any of the workstations which aren't visible via the "browse" function, works. ie. the machine Workstation7 is not visible while browsing via Windows Explorer, but is accessible if I type \\Workstation7 in the path field. Occasionally the workstations exhibiting these symptoms show errors that their connection to the FreeNAS server has failed and only rebooting resolves the issue. All other workstations on the network use identical Windows 7 Professional installations and never have these problems.

I've checked all machines and they're not using Home Groups. All are setup on the same WorkGroup as the FreeNAS server and the network type is set to Work Network.

Temporarily disabling the firewall on the workstations with the issue made no difference, so I know this has nothing to do with the firewall settings.

Any pointers would be appreciated. Thanks.

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