Offline Files . Sync

[echoch]

I am having a perplexing problem with Sync Center and offline files.

I am using VISTA on my T61 laptop (Vista Business) and GATEWAY desktop (Home). I am using the Desktop as the "primary" file server which would be the master source for files. However, I travel a great deal and take the laptop with me wherever, so most of my changes are made on the laptop. Occasionally, I will work with a file on the desktop.

For a short while, the Sync center worked well and the network connected the laptop and desktop whenever I turned the laptop on at home. For some reason, now, I cannot make a network connection through the sync center or through any other means that I am aware of USING THE COMPUTER NAME.

My desktop is called GATEWAY. My laptop is T61. On the T61 when I am connected to my home network, I can go to Windows "Computer" and see the network location for GATEWAY which is mapped as "Z". However, clicking on this location, I get to the offline files location on the laptop and not on the GATEWAY. In Sync Center, I see under "offline files" - NETWORK FILES AVAILABLE OFFLINE. So I am able to get to the cached files on the laptop but I can't get to the Desktop folder that the files are in and I can not sync the changes in both computers.

Further, if I try to access the GATEWAY via NETWORK in Windows, I can only get to the location on the Desktop - as if the computers were not on the network.

However, I tried to access the Desktop/GATEWAY using its IP address and I can connect to it. To try this, I tried to map the drive to a different letter drive than Z.

I have thought about turning offline files off (not sure how to do that), disconnecting the mapped drive Z, and starting over, but I will probably lose a significant of work that has been done on the two computers and not synced in the past 2 weeks since I was last able to connect.

I am not a tech guru, and I am getting very frustrated. I imagine that this is a simple issue and I should be able to reconnect the laptop and the desktop using the mapped drive or the network function. But I can't figure out how or what I must do.

Can anyone share their knowledge on this situation?

Thanks,

Eric