Shared folders not visible over network

We recently attended a customer who was having problems with their SOHO network. She was not able to see any shared folders on another laptop computer.

Looking in the “File manager” of the laptop, I could not see any shared folders being displayed from the other laptop. I then went to the laptop that was sharing its folders but everything looked in order.

I tried restarting both laptops but that didn’t fix the problem. I then tried rebooting her router. After the router rebooted, all the shared folders became visible again!

Before you reboot the router, try shutting down the computer completely (rather than restarting) and booting it back up as that also fixes the issue in some cases.

This just goes to show that if things are not working right, try rebooting all of the equipment!