computer won't broadcast its workgroup name

[Jim S.]

My Windows 7 system has suddenly stopped advertising its existence for no apparent reason. I can connect to my shared files and printers via IP address, but I have a media player that won't let me specify shares manually, it just scans for workgroups, then hosts, then shares, presenting me with a list to pick from at each step. So it can't see the server at all! Anybody know what happened?

 

[mike123abc]

Your firewall is probably blocking network discovery. If you are using a third party make sure it is letting through netbios, llmnr, smb and rpc.