Guess what? Network issues!

Hey gang,

My WD TV Live was working perfectly out of the box. I was able to stream content from shared folders on my PC (running WinXP) via my router (network cable) with no problems at all. The **bleep** thing played anything I threw at it. I was in Happy Land, living a blissful illusion that quickly came crashing down last week when the first signs of trouble started showing up.

Connection started dropping, finding my “network shares” proved to be difficult at times. Until finally, one day, the little **bleep** decided that I wouldn’t be able to access my network shares at all. In fact, nothing happens when I try to enter “network share”. Youtube and all that stuff is working fine though and I’m able to ping the device from my computer. But for whatever reason I can’t access the shared folders.

When I contacted the Western Digitals Customer Service they gave me the wonderful advice of turning the device off and on again… Gee, really? Never thought of attempting that several times with both the PC, router and WDTV, in different order of sequence!

Now I turn to you fellow gentlemen, in hopes of a solution. Anyone?

Wired or wifi? My wifi creates just these problems.

Wired, I should’ve mentioned that. And like I said, it just stopped working after having worked perfectly on the same setup for about two weeks. I have not added or modified anything in the setup, unless some gnomes walked in one night and did something malicious I’m not aware of.

I hate those gnomes.

Can you find the shares from any other computer? Haven’t installed anything suspicious on the xp?

So you’re saying that your internet connection from the Live works because you’re able to access YouTube and such, correct?  Then it’s down to a shared folder issue.

Do you have any other computers you can connect to your net to see if they can see those shared folders?  If not, I’d go to the shared folders and turn off sharing, reboot your computer, go back in and share them again (and perhaps rename them as well for the share).  You don’t say what OS you are using, but for Windows 7 if it’s running the @$@! security system I’d also remove password from the shared folder access.

Hmm, I can find other shares on the network. Or so I thought. Just to double-check I plugged in my laptop into the router and for some reason the laptop can’t find my stationary and vice versa. The HD TV found my laptop though, so I guess we can isolate the problem to my stationary computer?

I’m using Windows XP. I tried to unshare, reboot, rename and reshare them but to no avail. The WD TV Live can’t still find my stationary computer, but it is able to find my laptop I discovered.

Have you tried the regedit fix? Probably not a solution, but hey, its fun to try :wink:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters

 IsDomainMaster: TRUE

MaintainServerList: Yes

It sounds like it’s definitely a network issue with your main computer.  Make sure it’s the same workgroup (HOME is the default but I would advise changing it to WORKGROUP.  Seriously.  You can do this by right-clicking My Computer and you’ll see the workgroup setting in XP under the Computer Name tab.  You will need to change your laptop the same way).

ansbar: You were right, that WAS fun! Didn’t seem to do much unfortunately.

mkelley: I have a Swedish edition of WinXP, but I changed the name of the workgroup nontheless, rebooted etc, but no dice.

I went away for a couple of hours to do some shopping… and when I got back it just started working again, out of the blue!

I guess that human sacrifice worked after all.