Itunes doesn't show Home Share words or list of other authorized computers

Question

I have "turned on" Home Share. I have authorized a second computer. When logged in to the second computer, the Itunes screen does not show the option Home Share, or show the names of the authorized computers. So, no sharing of music is possible. What is the fix for this, please? The Help catalog does not answer the question.

Answer 1

I don't know if you've done this already, but you need to:
Turn on "home sharing" turned on all of the relevant computers;
Make sure the computers have to be on the same network;
You just turned on "Home Sharing", some people report that they had to quit iTunes and restart it before "Home Sharing" worked; and
If those previous steps failed to solve the problem, you might want to check the firewall settings on each of the computers to ensure that UDP Port 5353 (which allows the computers to see each other and appear in iTunes on the other computers) and TCP Port 3689 (which allows the actual "Home Sharing" features to work) are both enabled.
See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1601 for how to configure the default Windows firewall. If you're running a third party firewall (sometimes part of your antivirus software), the particulars of opening the appropriate ports on the firewall may differ.
If you think the problem may be a firewall issue and you're not 100% comfortable with how to "open ports", a quick test would be to temporarily disable the firewall on both machines, restart iTunes on both machines, and see if it works. This is just a test to see if the firewall is the problem, but you should promptly turn your firewall on again and if "Home Sharing" worked while the firewalls were turned off, you just need to proceed with the particulars of opening these two ports on both machines. I've also seen people open the port in their default Windows firewall, but neglect to realize that they might have two firewalls (e.g., neglect to check their antivirus software's firewall). Unfortunately, the particular instructions on how to open the firewall ports will vary from one firewall software package to another. But if you have problems, let us know what firewall software you're running and someone can probably help. (Or just check with your firewall vendor.)
Hope this helps.