Photo Mechanic cannot "see" my network?

[William R Wood]

Suddenly a few weeks back, PM stopped "seeing" my home network (everything is on wired ethernet, no Wifi).
I have been fiddling with this issue for a couple of weeks but cannot find the cause or solution.

I am running Win 10 Pro fully updated and this applies to PM Plus, PM6 and PM5.
I cannot see or copy anything to/from my other computers or the storage drives on the network router.
Strangely, I can print from PM to the laser printer on the network (printer is connected to the router via ethernet cable).

PM also changed the way it shows the network in Navigator, I have attached a screenshot showing the bizzare change.
It reminds me of the way Windows File Explorer used to display network drives many years ago:

Network
    Entire Network
      Microsoft Windows Network

If I click on MS Windows Network nothing happens and an error message sometimes pops up saying something like "no such address exists.

Pretty sure this is a PM problem. Windows File Explorer and all my other software sees the network perfectly including other photo software. All my other software can read, write, copy and view images on the other computers and the storage drives.

It might have something to do with Windows Updates, there have been a lot of updates to Win 10 lately and some of them do cause problems.

In any event I hope you can fix this since I can't see or backup my images on my home network.

Thanks

[Kirk Baker]

William,

Suddenly a few weeks back, PM stopped "seeing" my home network (everything is on wired ethernet, no Wifi).
I have been fiddling with this issue for a couple of weeks but cannot find the cause or solution.

I am running Win 10 Pro fully updated and this applies to PM Plus, PM6 and PM5.
I cannot see or copy anything to/from my other computers or the storage drives on the network router.
Strangely, I can print from PM to the laser printer on the network (printer is connected to the router via ethernet cable).

PM also changed the way it shows the network in Navigator, I have attached a screenshot showing the bizzare change.
It reminds me of the way Windows File Explorer used to display network drives many years ago:

Network
    Entire Network
      Microsoft Windows Network

Nothing has changed recently as to how the Navigator displays the network.  The Navigator was written many years ago, and Microsoft keeps changing how Windows Explorer shows the Network.  We haven't kept up with their changes.

If I click on MS Windows Network nothing happens and an error message sometimes pops up saying something like "no such address exists.

Pretty sure this is a PM problem.

You're likely correct.

It might have something to do with Windows Updates, there have been a lot of updates to Win 10 lately and some of them do cause problems.

In any event I hope you can fix this since I can't see or backup my images on my home network.

It is difficult to fix things that we can't reproduce.  I can use the Navigator with my network which consists of two NASes and several Windows and macOS computers.

You could always use the Open command on the File menu to open a folder.  Drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Photo Mechanic should also open the folder.  And you can always drag and drop a network folder to the Favorites to add it as a favorite folder and go from there.

-Kirk

[William R Wood]

Thanks, Kirk.

All of your suggestions work, somewhat circuitous but they work!
Hopefully you will come across a fix since I much prefer access to my network folders/files from Navigator which worked fine a few weeks ago?

Regards

Bill Wood