Finally!!!!! I never realized I named the computers the same name. No other link or forum post ever mentioned it. Probably because it should have been obvious but I have so much crap going on I didn't even think to check to make sure they were different when I created the laptop name. When you MESS with stuff like this day in and day out saying THANK you doesn't really do it justice. That being said THANK YOU. I think I know the answer to this but I'll ask just to make sure. More than one site mentioned making sure certain services were started and turned to automatic. This is the list:
DNS Client
Function Discovery Provider Host
Function Discovery Resource Publication
Peer Networking Grouping
HomeGroup Provider
HomeGroup Listener
SSDP Discovery
UPnP Device Host

My question is now that I've made all these services run automatically will it slow down my system? Thanks again manThose services may slow down (slightly) your boot up time, but they shouldn't have any long term effects on slowing your computer or netwrok speed at all.Congrats!!Hi, I know this has been a while since the last post but I seem to have the same problem but both my desktop and my laptop have different names. So I tried to go and look into command prompt with ipconfig /all and found out that my desktop has its NODE TYPE to HYBRID and my laptop has its NODE TYPE to Diffusion.

If this is the problem I would really like to know what to do in order for my homegroup to work again.

Thank you!if you use win 7, just connet to network, join grop, input homegrup code