johnhook

ABOU,

Johnwill is right - having more detailed information about your PC hardware, network hardware, IP and network settings, etc. would be most helpful in troubleshooting and resolving this issue.

Without this information, I can make a few guesses as to the cause of this problem:

1) The power-saving features on your laptop are causing a disconnection from your home LAN. When it comes back up - the NIC in the laptop is not linking back with the network - or is establishing a link by leasing a new IP address. Provided your laptop remains plugged into AC power - I would disable the hibernation and power-saving features to prevent the laptop from "dropping" off your LAN.

2) Your router is leasing IP addresses to your PCs via DHCP. This is causing the IP addresses on one or both PCs to change when the lease expires. This change is causing a lag in which the PC is advertising its computer name via NETBIOS - which would explain why the PC isn't visible on the network right away.

Given the simplicity of your 2-PC home network, I would use STATIC IP addresses (manually configured) on BOTH PCs instead of using the DHCP server in your router. If both PCs always have the same address - accessing them via Windows NETBIOS name resolution won't be an issue.

- John