Backup not working

So is there anything new on this? I have both NV and NV+, both with latest firmware (4.1.4), have owned both for a while but have done backups from Windows PCs to the ReadyNASes manually up to now. Finally sat down to set up automated backups via FrontView this weekend (hadn't been able to face it up to now; figured it wouldn't be a 5-minute operation).

Sure enough, if I use Windows archive bit method and a path like //XXXlaptop/mydocs (and yes, mydocs is set up as the share name in Windows), I cannot access the share, either by using the Test Connection button or during an actual backup. I called tech support, and they said the problem is with the way my shares are setup, that this frequently is a problem, and that I should use Retrospect instead. But I'd rather not have to install and maintain software on each client separately, seems to me that I should be able to accomplish this fairly simply in FrontView.

I have gone through many forum posts and much Googling, and it led me to try turning off Windows simple file sharing, to setting up a new user under Windows with permission to do everything ("full control") and providing that login/password to the FrontView backup job, and bunches of other things. Made no difference.

So, just for the hell of it (or maybe because I read it here in the forum, can't remember), I went and looked for laptop's IP address (ipconfig), and if I use the IP address instead of the PC name, it works just fine, both for Test Connection and for the actual backup.

I suppose I can use a fixed IP address for the laptop, but I would rather not, for a whole lot of reasons. (Among other things, I need to set up quite a few distinct backup jobs across multiple PCs, and it will be much easier to track which job is which, including in logs, if I can simply read the machine name.) Is there a workaround for this problem?

By the way, the "works with explicit IP address" and "doesn't work with computer name" behavior is exactly the same on NV and NV+.

Thanks.