This may or may not help, but I had serious problems when I "assumed" that a Home Network was what I wanted in my Home. The laptop crashed (reasons unknown) while it was connected to the desktop via the Home Network. That locked all the drives on the desktop, which would no longer even start.
12 or so hours of cursing later (using the laptop to browse the web), I ended up reinstalling Windows on the desktop. Happily, it kept all the stuff installed on the PC (apart from the pesky Home Network).
I set up a Work Network and it's behaved immaculately. It even allowed me to network with an older PC running Linux, although I've given up on Linux now.
So, if you're trying to connect a Mac to a Win Home Network, and if you can, I'd try a Work Network.