Two computers in home network losing connection

Question

So, I have two Windows computers, both in my Home Network. One of them acts like a server - it has a shared folder and the other one should be able to access it at all times.

Mostly, this works flawlessly, but occasionally the connection is lost and the "client" cannot access the shared folder. After some restarts, the connection is established again, but this is really annoying and stops the working process.

The client's OS is Windows 8.1 The server's OS is Windows 7

They are both connected to the same router.

Any ideas what may be causing the loss in connection between the two computers ?

Answer 1

What can happen is that the IP address of one or both of the machines can be given out to some other device on the router, like a WiFi device.

It's quite common for a device to get a number, say ...,102, and then go to sleep. The router looses memory of that (because it's no longer an active connection) and give ...,102 out to some other device. When the first device wakes up, you get a clash of numbers.

Try running ipconfig /renew on one of the devices and see if that's a cure. I do this quite often on my "surface", because there are other laptops doing exactly this thing.