I'm no expert, Braddo, but I'll offer what I can.
I have a mixture of Win7Ult, Vista and XP and others on my LAN so I have no Home Group.
Tv should be fairly uncomplicated to install; that's the beauty of it, but you may have particular circumstances.
Advanced sharing settings include:
Home or Work
on n/w discovery
on file and printer sharing
on sharing so anyone with network access...
enable file sharing... 40-56 bit encryption
off password protected sharing
use user accounts and pwds to connect..
Public settings much the same.
No licence is necessary if you are using Tv for home use, and you've said as much. Exclusively.
You don't need to set up an a/c with Tv; each just phones home and asks for a session, each time you connect.
Port control isn't nesessary, unless you have previously closed them.
WinFirewall never appears.
Win Wrkgrp no big deal.
Remote Desktop must be a Pro/Ultimate thing, philosophically.
C&C window shouldn't be nec'y for just two poots. It's a quick-swap thing.
'Your ID' field looks a mess. I've only ever seen it with nnn nnn nnn, codes embedded in a few places within each system for life.
With Tv sitting on-screen on both you should be able to simply enter the Id and password of the other and connect.
You'll need to clean up the Id field, I'd say, before you make much headway.
An interesting aside: I was 'shaped' towards the end of last month; slowed by my ISP. I expected Tv authentication to be slower than normal, and it was, but in spite of my having set 'accept LAN access...' the whole session was extremely slow. That tells me that there's constant phoning home; it doesn't seem to be as simple as authentication then fallback to the LAN. So you'll certainly need good and constant access out, even on a simple LAN.
I'd try deconstructing your setup. Can you revert to defaults everywhere? Use a simple router? Swap 64-bit disks out and test with 32-bit Win7? Deconstruct.
Maybe a Tv tech will come wandering by. They appear occasionally. Strange that assistance is so poor for such an ostensibly good product.