Windows computers can't see each other on the network

Hi. I'm sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong forum, but I hope someone can help me out. I apologize if my explanation isn't the best. I'm not technically saavy, so please explain things to me in basic laymen's terms since I don't understand computer terms very well.

I have two computers. One runs Windows 8.1 (call it comp1) and one runs Windows 7 (call it comp2). Both are on my home network. I shared their respective hard drives and both computers are in the homegroup. There is no password protection on the sharing and network discovery is on. However when I go to the network folder I can only see the comp1 shared folders on comp1 only and not comp2. I can't see comp2 on the network being shared there at all in comp1's network folder. The same problem exists on comp2. I can see the comp2 folder in the comp2 network folder, but not the comp1 or it's shared folders.

This didn't used to be the case. Before both computers showed up and I could access their shared folders on either computer. It even worked when I used to used Lubuntu linux years ago. I have since forgotten how to do the sharing in linux and am struggling to remember what I did to make these computers see each other on the network.Please tell me what to do to fix this problem.

Any help you can give is very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Both the comp should be switch on in order to access the shared files.

Plus, u may be missing read/write access in the first place. 

Both the comp should be switch on in order to access the shared files.

 

Plus, u may be missing read/write access in the first place. 

1. Both computers are on when I try to access the shared files. They are both on everytime I try to and never do the shared files come up anymore.

2. Where would I go to fix this issue of read write access? The files are shared with everyone that has access to the computer. Can you give step by step instructions as to what I should do to have full read write access.

Thanks