Help with browsing windows network please

[klepp0906]

I'm sure some will frown on this. Im not a fan myself but im brand new to linux. Im a long time enthusiast who wants to broaden his horizons. (should have a long time ago tbh). I tried setting up a tri boot system with the big 3 but due to how convoluted my main pc is (sli/link aggregation/raid etc) it wasnt in the cards. More trouble than it was worth.

Left me with the VM option which really isnt all that bad.

Anyhow, I apologize that this is my first post. I normally like to do things on my own, but ive given this a stab for literally days without luck and with a baby due in a couple of weeks - I simply cannot afford to slam my head into a wall any longer.

So linux mint (obviously) guest on a windows 10 host in vmware. (i guess the latter portion of that is largely irrelevant).

I have some shares set up on both the host machine, and another windows pc. As you can imagine the interaction between the two windows machines is fine. The windows host machine can also browse the linux shares I have set up. The other standalone windows PC can not. (this issue is secondary)

My linux mint guest can see all of the windows host shares if i go through mnt/hgfs (it cannot see the standalone pc or its shares - again secondary)

The MAIN issue (which I assume solving will potentially solve all other issues) is that when I click on network in Linux, I see the Windows Network folder. When I click on the Windows Network folder, it loads empty. Nothing. Nada.

Now ive made it so far as to learn I may potentially need to edit the smb.conf file. Ive even done so with a few odds or ends ive found while scouring the net. After nothing has bore fruit i returned it to default and am now here.

I know this is quite a lot so I'm hoping someone with extensive networking/linux knowledge can make sense of this and walk me through ala a process of elimination of sorts perhaps.

I apologize and appreciate anyones time! This is driving me nuts!