Home network computers aren't shown in Windows Explorer

I have a Sagecom  F@ST™  3864AC Router, supplied by Optus (my ISP).

The LAN page looks like this:

If I click : "Add entries " I get a request for a MAC address and IP address. I put in my MAC address and 192.168.0.2 (or whatever) and it says it is not a valid MAC address.

When you enter MAC addresses did you use - or : between digits 24-0A-64-B0-32-85 or  24:0A:64:B0:32:85 ?

Again, do not turn off your router! At least not before you have fixed your problem!

How do you suppose should your PC get an IP address from that router when that router is not fully up yet? You have to power up your router at least 5 minutes before you switch the PC on! And then it depends on the router whether it is able to preserve these settings over reboots or not. Normally it should be able, though. Electricity use of a router is negligable. It probably uses less in 24 hours than your PC in 1 hour.

I do not know where you would find the relevant settings with your specific router. There should be a page which lists the currently connected devices with MAC no. (that is a unique number of the network chip in your PC) and with IP no. Write them down. Then switch off your PC (s) for a few minutes and then boot them up again. Check again. Apart from that: look on that page or a page with details for each of the devices if there is an option or text about permanent assignment. (Quigmo tells/shows you more about this.) You may have to click a checkmark for that. So, what you do is *not* add your devices to assign them "permanent" IP addresses in your router. Normally, you look at that router page and "nod it up" so to speak.

Outlook: You need the permanent assignment of IP addresses, so that, in the next step, you can assign a host name to each IP address and can then reliably reach the PC that you want to reach by name instead of checking for it's IP address first. Then, in yet another step, you would have to determine what you want to reach on each PC and share those folders. You then have to assign permissions for each user to reach those folders. (I've never used HomeGroups. I assume the HomeGroups feature took away the first step by assigning always the same hostnames to varying IP addresses by way of the mshome.net net.)

Yes, the modem is now set to get IP addresses automatically. The only way I have been told to set static addresses is by changing the IPv4 settings on each computer. But that then stops me from accessing my mobile phone's hotspot

Exactly. That's why I told you to go back to DHCP (=dynamic assignment). You wrote: the modem is now set to get IP addresses automatically. NO! You may mean it another (the right) way, but in that wording it's wrong and may confuse you later. Your PCs are set to *get* IP addresses automatically. And the router hands them out via DHCP, so it *sets* them automatically. And it should re-use always the same IP address for the same device. In turn, your PC will usually request that very same IP address it got the last time and the router will "nod" to that (this is called "re-lease" as in "lease again"). The sequence is "PC asks, router replies". Each time you boot up the PC it will start this question-answer-game. The lease time for the IP address is usually 24 hours. No later than that time the PC *has* to request again.

Brilliant! The MAC addresses have to have : not - between the figures. Thanks for that.

I now have a reasonable network arrangement - it remains to be seen whether it stays that way. I will let you know.

Ok, that page should list the currently connected devices. There should be a list. Where is it? I would suppose it's below the two buttons?

It also looks like your browser window is very narrow. Can you make it wider? I guess the three table headers and the two buttons should be on one line. And below that line there should be a table of the currently connected devices or all the devices that ever connected (that's why there is that button "remove entries").

If that table doesn't show an option or explicit text that it tries to assign permanently you can assign maximum 32 IPs permanently, as Pauli suggests.

How does the table show MAC addresses? with - or with : ? Likely with ":". That's the Unix way. Type them in the same way. It's possible that when a device is currently connected you cannot add a static lease. Normally, just assign the same IP as static that you see in the list, anyway.

As suggested you can reduce the end range to 100 or even lower. I remember you told about a printer earlier. If I recall right you set a static IP address for it (in the printer setup?). Make sure this address is *outside* this range = e.g. 101 or so). It's possible that until now this static assignment created a conflict on your network because that static IP no. was within the range controlled by the DHCP server of the router.

One further notice: WPS is for getting access to the WLAN network. You do not want to use WPS. You already have access to your WLAN. Just ignore that lengthy tutorial by S. It may be correct, but it's too long and too confusingly written.