Home Network :: Cannot See Local Lan Shares Under Network Icon

i purchased vaio with win8. Under network icon, I can not see any other computers in the local network therefore not able to access shares unless i explicitly map the shares which is tedious.

On other computers running win7 and xp, each of them can see each other under network icon.However that is not the case with my laptop running 8. Actually i have seen once or twice all pc-s show up but most of the time, they dont appear.

I read somewhere that following service need to be checked to make sure they are running: upnp, ssdp in services. I checked those and they are all running.

I also enabled "turn on network discovery" under network and sharing->advanced sharing. setting. To make it more complicated there are private and public and all network setting. I enabled all items as follows:

1. Private Turn on network discovery is checked along with Turn on automatic setup of network connected devices Turn on file and printer sharing is selected Allow Windows to manage homegroup connections is selected.

2. Guest or public Turn on network discovery is selected Turn on file and printer sharing is selected.

With these settings I still dont see the local computers and their shares. Do I need to check anything else?