Home Sharing with Windows 7

I'd set up Home Sharing on my venerable notepad running Windows XP Professional over a year ago. My iTunes library was on an external hard drive. I'd been able to access the iTunes library from several iPad 2's as well as my iPhone.

Times change, and events roll on.

I have changed jobs, and had to hand in my old notepad.

I have shifted my iTunes to my tower workstation running Windows 7 Ultimate. It was a bit of a cluster, but I have installed iTunes on the tower workstation. Additionally, I have the same iTunes library on the external hard drive connected to my Windows 7 environment. I had to back it up and then restore it, but all content is available, playlists, app backups, etc.

The final piece of the puzzle for me is Home Sharing.

I cannot get it to work.

I have enabled Home Sharing on the Windows 7 maching running iTunes 11.0.4.4 I then run "Music" on my iPad 2, hit the more button, and go to share my library. The "spinner" icon appears for about a minute, and then the app just goes "poof" and disappears.

I have disabled home sharing on the Windows box, as well as the iPad, restarted both, added in Home Sharing, and no joy.

I have unplugged my router, let it sit for a minute and then powered it back up, no joy.

From my lay perspective, given that I've not done anything on the iPad, and swapped a notepad running XP, for a workstation running 7, the cause is resident on the workstation. However, what the issue is, gosh only knows.

I disabled my antivirus and spyware software (ESET), with the same result, the Music app goes poof.

Any suggestions, would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Mark