Why isnt home sharing working?

okay, I found where you see if the computer is recognizing other devices in the finder sidebar and my computers are not seeing each other, which is why the home sharing is not working. I have tried turning the router on and off, and home sharing on and off. The computers both have the same apple id and same network. What else should I be checking? I have looked through the various articles and feel like I have done everything except that I don't understand where to turn ipv6 off, and I dont know how to find out if my router is up to date. firewalls are off on both computers. And neither of them is recognizing the ipad. Help!!!! any suggestions appreciated.

Katarina

Thank you for the helpful illustrations. But the problem is that although home sharing seems to be turned on on both my computers, there is no "shared " section that turns up and no other library. And although I won't see the ipad on my computers I should see the computers on the ipad and I don't.

And I thought maybe the problem was my router, but my husband says he has no problem doing home sharing between his computer and Apple TV..so the router works for home sharing.

I have done everything I read about in the posts. Reset the router. Turn everything on and off over and over. Make sure I am using the same Apple ID..etc.

I only mentioned the finder cause I was wondering if what was going wrong was that the computers are not recognizing each other on the network and thought that would. Show on the finder. But maybe that is beside the point?

Anyhow, I am still having this problem that I can't seem to get home sharing to work and hope you can help. Even if I can just get it to work between the two computers that would be helpful

Thanks,

K

My firewalls are off on both computers. I have never done any sort of file sharing or security software. When I go in to sharing on my system preferences the only thing checked is bluetooth. Should there be other things checked?

When I go into Network, they are both on the same network and the IP addresses are almost the same but one ends in .78 and one ends in .79 . is that okay?

When I turn on and off Home Sharing on the computers they both say that it is enabled, but no Home shares section turns up.

I have turned the router off and turned off all apple tv and all my computers and devices and reset the computer without sucess.

One of my computers is running system 10.7.5 while the other is 10.8.5.

could that be the problem? I don't really want to upgrade unless I have to as its an older computer and works fine and every time I upgrade things I run into such problems.

as far as I know it is standard. Its just the router that Time Warner Cable brought us for our wifi and internet.

could it make a difference that I have not upgraded my older computer to lion?

Do you think I should try bringing the computers over to my neighbor and see if it works on a different router?

I dont know how to do file sharing but can check it out. what do I do to try it?

no, I just figured out how to do file sharing and it says that the server does not exist when I enter the afp number from one mac to another

so there is something not working.

Yeah, they don't show up, so I tried doing it by entering the afp address and that didnt do it either. so it seems like for some reason although the wifi works and the apple tv can connect and share, these computers are not sharing over my home router.