Ubuntu – Ubuntu can see network work group but can’t see Ubuntu from windows

Sorry to be a complete noob, just installed Ubuntu and I'm trying to get things up and running.

Goal: To connect several drives to my Ubuntu, very old, laptop. This will act as a NAS serving up music, video, and documents for my in home, windows WORKGROUP.

Where I am now:

Ubuntu is running on my laptop. I've installed updates and believe I'm current (but don't know how to check/confirm).

Samba is installed on the Ubuntu laptop. I followed the instructions from many on-line sites and best I can tell it seems to be running correctly. I can see all my windows machines from Home -> browse network -> windows network -> WORKGROUP. All three other computers that are on the workgroup appear and I'm able to go in and see files and such.

So far so good. But that is where I run into trouble.

Remember the point of this fun is to have the Ubuntu box serving the stuff, however…

None of my windows machines can see the Ubuntu laptop on the network. When I go in to My Computer -> Network I see my other two Windows machines but not the Ubuntu laptop. This is happening on both Win 7 and Win 8. Right now it is all hard wired, so wireless is not an issue.

After multiple refreshes, trying all kinds of things, lost sleep the past few nights, and pulling out lots of hair, I've broken down and decided to ask for help. Ya it's a first step.

Anyways, I've looked all over and can't find anything that can help on-line. I must have messed something simple up, so simple that no one bothers to mention it in their walk through. At least I hope so.

Any help you could offer would be, well, helpful.

EDIT #1:

user68186 – I went through the link you provided. I added a new share through the Samba GUI: /home/steve/1-share
I checked all the permissions (of course the screens look a bit different) but it loks like everything is correct.

I get stuck here:
Step 3. Go to the Windows on the desktop computer and open Windows Explorer, Click on the triangle next to Network on the left panel. From the drop-down list you should be able to select the name of the laptop computer running Ubuntu.

Um, the laptop is just not listed there.

EDIT #2:

Also, I can not see the laptop if I type the IP address into Firefox. "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at 192.168.1.XXX" (where XXX is the last 3 numbers of course)

EDIT #3:

Thanks Dan, so I typed "\192.168.1.xxx\home/steve/Public" into explorer (this folder is shared in the Samba Server Configuration) and I get the message "Windows cannot access \192.168.1.xxx\home/steve/Public". Just cause I don't know the formats better I also tried "\192.168.1.xxx\home\steve\Public" too but get the same message. Also tried "\192.168.1.109\steve-xxx" and get the same message.

It seems Windows really can't see the laptop.