Buffalo Linkstation Live LS-CH1-0TL-EU not visible or accessible on home network.

[MarleneB]

Disclaimer: I am an old woman, ignorant of any programming on PC's.

I have a laptop running on Windows XP. I have a Buffalo Linkstation Live LS-CH1-0TL-EU NAS drive, manufactured Aug. 2010.

After initial installation, the NAS drive was accessible on 2 Windows XP laptops and an AppleMac on the wireless home network (Using BT broadband router). The laptop on which the first installation of the Buffalo software was done had to be reset to factory settings and all software re-installed. Now the NAS drive does not appear in the 'My computer' window (where all extra drives show up) and on the other two computers the NAS drive is not accessible and it doesn't show up in the Buffalo control window. The 'error' message tells me to contact the network administrator... sadly, that is me & I'm clueless.

I've been bleating on every forum that looked like it had any advice and the consensus seemed to be that the NAS drive has gone into EM (?) mode and needs a firmware update. On this forum all the links to further advice/downloads (that I thought applicable to me) leads to 'page not found' results.

I don't know anything about IP addresses, 'ping', partitions or any of the cunning abbreviations you clever people use.

I have downloaded a zip file with a 160LS updater file for Windows (I hope this is the correct one - it seems to be the only one...) I have no idea what version of operating system (if that is what it is) my NAS drive is running on. I never changed any passwords or permissions on it (I don't know how)

If I unzip & install this updater file, will it wipe my 'stuff' on the NAS drive?

Can anyone give me VERY SIMPLE and blow-by-blow instructions how to access my 'lost' files on the NAS drive? Many queries listed as 'solved' seem to give only the initial problem & the final thanks for the solution, but not the bit in the middle that actually solves the query - conversely, this proves my ignorance that I can't even find this for myself. 

Soon I will have to seek a divorce because my agitation with this problem is driving my husband mad (he knows less than I do!)

Thanks in advance to anyone kind enough to help.

MarleneB