"There is no media in the current folder." (Oh yes there is!)

I have had my WDTV Live Plus for just over a year, and during this time I have lurked in these discussion forums for tips and solutions to the problems I have had. Overall, I like my WDTV a lot, because it does a lot and does it well.

It’s time now for me to give back some help and add an important tip of my own, because I have finally resolved my most frustrating problem of all. That is: how not to get the dreaded message from the media player, “There is no media in the current folder” when I click on Music/Media servers/(name of my Win 7 computer).

Sometimes, I could see all my music folders and files and stream it from the PC to the media player, and sometimes I could not.  I know why, now.  Continue reading, and you will know why, too.  It has to do with patiently waiting . . .

I cussed out the WDTV way too often. I called WD tech support many times and got excellent service from the higher level techs. They spent a lot of time trying to help me, so I give lots of kudos to those guys. But, try as we may, nothing really helped the situation clear up. So, I kind of lived with it, but kept trying different ideas.

WDTV had no problems with detecting the video and photo folders; it was the music folder that was a problem. I repeatedly re-shared the music folder even though Win 7 showed it was already shared; obviously it wasn’t. Sometimes this fixed things; sometimes not.

The solution breakthrough came when, one day, I decided to re-share all my media folders; not just the music folder. I will tell you I have hardly any photos to share from the server PC, a few dozen mp4, ISO etc. movie files, (most of the movie files reside on two hard drives connected to the WDTV) and I have over 9000 music files in my iTunes folder to share!

I first re-shared my mostly empty photo folder and noticed the hard disk activity light flicker then stop; when I re-shared the video folder, the disk light flickered a minute or so, and when I re-shared the music folder, the disk light flickered solidly for around 20 minutes! Remember, I have over 9000 music files, and Windows had to create a record of them all. When all the sharing and disk light flickering ended, I checked the WDTV and it detected all my music files again.

Apparently, Windows 7 writes files for all the media shared, and if there is a lot of media, it can take quite a long time! Sure, Windows warns: “this can take a few minutes”, and shortly after that it notifies that the files were shared. Well, they weren’t – not yet anyway – not until all that file writing took place for 20 minutes.

The problem had been solved, and the WDTV was not to blame; even Windows was not a total culprit. The problem was caused by not giving enough time (lots of it) for Windows to make its list of music files it could then share with the media player.

Once in a while things “blow-up”, and I loose the music files detection again. This can happen after a Win update and reboot, or for reasons unknown. Whatever makes it go away again is not the primary issue. How to get it all back again is the issue, and by using the method I described, things will be up and running again soon.

One final important step: After all the re-sharing has completed, the server PC must be restarted, as apparently Windows needs to read the share files it has created during its boot up each time. Once the PC has completed booting, THEN turn on the WDTV, and it can detect all the media folders again.


  Additional notes:

Darn, this technique has worked for me for weeks – until today.  Good news, though, it still works with a second effort.  This time, I shut down the Win 7 PC, then started it and re-shared music folder again, then rebooted again and all was well when boot up of PC was completed.   If all else fails, then UN-share the problem folder, (un-check “share this folder” box)  reboot, then share it again, reboot, and this ought to get it.

BTW, the WDTV remained on during all this time, and when I checked it after the final reboot / file writing, the music folder was shared to WDTV again.  This indicates to me that the problem is definitely Win 7 sharing related.  If the WDTV gets the right info from the Win 7 PC at any time, it is happy.

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My apologies for the lack of paragraph breaks in my message.  They were definitely in the Word file I pasted into the text box here!

If you didn’t know…you can add paragraph breaks to your original post. Just select ‘Options’ (in the upper right corner of your original post) then select ‘Edit’. It would sure make it easier to read.  :smiley:

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Hey, thanks for the tip!  It’s all edited now. 

Is there anyway to keep paragraphs, etc intact when text for a message is pasted into the text box to begin with?

Useful info! Kudos!

I had the same problem with a 2TB drive full of movies on a Windows 7 machine.  Your post should be sent to all WD Tech Support staff.  I spent an hour with them yesterday.  They were going to escalate the case to level 2, but they had left for the day.  I did a quick search with the message and found your post (thank you for putting the exact problem in the subject line).  I have no doubt you saved me some serious wasted time and frustration.

Your instructions were great.  I would only add one thing: not to close the share window or select done until the hard drive light has stopped flashing.  It was intuitive to me, but may not be to others.  And there are and will be others with this issue.  With any luck they will find your post.

I wish I could give you five kudos stars, but sadly I am allowed only one.  Thanks for taking the time to _ share _ :wink:.

Well, ‘thank you’ for the kudos and the very kind words.  I just knew that if the right “victim” of this problem saw my solution they would likely appreciate it.  I know I would have, but I never saw any solution, and that’s why it took a lot of head-scratching to finally figure it out.

I, too, spent countless hours with folks high up in “Level 2”.  They tried real hard, but never figured it out.  Anyway, I have their names and phone numbers.  So, I will give them a call and fill them in since I now have someone else (you) who testifies to the efficacy of the solution.  This problem is not related to any particular model WDTV, I’m sure, since it is a Windows 7 “issue” that manifests itself when trying to operate the WDTV.

Your suggestions are good ones, and I will edit my post to incorporate them.  Before you leave this message thread, will you take a moment to tic the ‘accept as solution’ choice within the Options menu you see on your right?  Thanks.

I do not seem to have that option.  Am I in the wrong place?

You’re in the right place.  To the right of the subject line is a drop-down Options menu.  Click it and choose “accept as a solution” .  Or, to the right of the bottom of the message you should see Accept As Solution, next to that is the Reply button.  Hopefully, you can’t miss seeing these.

other than this, very helpful explanation above, i also found a couple of other things very useful in fixing this issue.

  1. was to check that i was really sharing the folders correctly… i know… sounds basic, but although i had initialised media sharing, i wasn’t using this method:  http://www.acryan.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2269  just ignore the registry stuff at the end. (i dont know if this fixed it, as video was already working fine, but hey, worth a quick read.)

  2. MOST IMPORTANTLY:  i had a problem with my Music media library that meant it never really stopped Updating, and would constandtly re-update, making it tough to sync. check out this solution to rebuild your corrupted music library : http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/114791-windows-media-player-rebuild-corrupted-libraries.html

i hope this helps too.

ifcican:

Thanks for the additional comments and links.  A comment about the advanced sharing info:  while in there ,read all the blue hyperlinks that give explanations to learn more.

Re: the info about cleaning up the Win media player files was new to me, and I wiill give it a go soon as I can.  I do not use Win media player to create playlists for the WD, although I did early on, but it has “problems” so I figured out how to use iTunes to do it, AND create truly random playlists using iTunes DJ.  It works great for playing from my large iTunes music folder that is also on the WD’s hard drive.  --Mike