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[benzofree2002]

I thought I would post my experience in case it helps someone else.

I have three boxes running windows 7.  I've had dismal results sharing files with Windows 7 homegroups.  I found it to be too quirky, computer X can see shares on Y, but Y can't see X and that sort of thing.  With homegroups disabled I set up simple network sharing via a common workgroup.  Also works on mixed networks with 7, Vista and XP.  Still have same quirkiness, but less of it than with homegroups.

A month ago a set up my dns-320 and it played nicely with Windows 7 networking up to this week.  Then, for no apparent reason, the NAS shares were no longer visible to Network on either of two computers with wired connections or my wireless laptop, all 7 x64.

After much head scratching, updating, rolling back firmware where possible, reformatting NAS drives, rebooting and such I found a work-around that has held for a couple days so far... fingers still crossed.

I set up each network adapter in each W7 computer to request a static IP from my router. Computer 1 [192.168.1.2], Computer 2 [192.138.1.3] etc.  I don't remember if the NAS needed to be set to static or if I changed it but I made it ask for [192.168.1.254].  In each case I used the default subnet mask and for the Gateway IP address and DNS1 I used the IP address of the router.  In my case [192.168.1.1].

I set the router to manually reserve those IPs for the corresponding MAC Address of each device.  That way each IP will not be given out to the wrong device while the correct device is offline.  I don't know if this step is necessary but it is an option available with my router.

The result is no quirkiness between any W7 computer and my NAS or between W7 computers.  Every share is always visible to every other computer and can be browsed to.  I hope this solution continues to work and I don't know why it does.  Obviously I need to understand networking better.

Edit: Please post  your successes or failures with this method.