Small Office Windows 10 Homegroup keeps crashing

[trents]

I service a small office environment for the staff managing a gated senior community. Four desktops and a portable are sharing files and printers via a peer to peer homegroup network. All machines are running Windows 10. Every now and then the Homegroup gets borked and I can't figure it out. The first time it was right after the first major Windows 10 cumulative update back in November. It happened again this week. I checked the router and the 8 port switch. The hardware is functioning normally. All machines show the homegroup header in the net work tree of file manager but there are no work stations that show under the header. What can cause this?

Thanks.

 

[Pinky]

First guess is that the file/print sharing is being turned off, or the network type is being set to public. Could also be network aware/monitoring antivirus blocking the file/print sharing traffic.

 

[trents]

The people using the homegroup would not know how to turn file and print sharing off. Using Avast free version as the AV and that was a recent change. Possibility. Will keep an eye on that one. Thanks.

 

[Pinky]

It's possible a Windows update/component is turning it off, which is more what I meant than the end user doing it.

I generally DON'T let windows manage workgroups when forced to use them. I setup shares and users with passwords and save the credentials with the mapped drive.

 

[trents]

My sense is that you are correct about some Windows upgrade component being the culprit. Why can't Microsoft quit messing with us?