Help! Network Shares in Win 7 ( Loosing one account at a time)

[ronald_bayani]

Hi everyone! I have been having this problem for a long time. I have a number of media mostly from my Bluray disc collection that I converted to MKV into my hard drives (32 TB). I created several Windows 7 user accounts with passwords, in order to separate Movies, foreign films, Concerts,Documentaries,TV series, Music and kid-stuff. Initially I can access them all using those accounts. I got the WDTV wired connected to the network. After a while(days, weeks sometimes months ) … .the WDTV will start loosing access to this shared folders one account at a time.

Sometimes only 1 account works or 2, sometimes all access lost,. Even if I create a new account , it will not find it,after it starts loosing this accounts. “Unable to access source” . My laptop and other PC has no problem accessing this folders using this accounts. The only way I can resolve this is via reinstalling windows 7 and re-sharing this hundreds of folders again. Sometimes the shares just comeback without me doing anything … . but mostly it doesn’t . I have tried using another WDTV live, tried rebooting my router, firmware upgrade , firmware roll down, resetting the WDTV, rebooting my PC,Master Browser stuff. I have look at different forums, but I could not find any answers.

I f I don’t use any user account with password. It wold be to many to browse and takes a while to load and in the end it will loose it’s access even logging in anonymously . . .Many thanks in advance to those who can help me.

[Trancer]

I have not a similar situation before posted on the forums. Perhaps it would be best to contact WD Support about this. You can do so over the phone or via E-mail.

Support Options

[Pete_Gos]

could it be TCP/IP Port Exhaustion… https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa560610(v=bts.20).aspx

or simply you are using a Desktop os to really perform a server role… how many shares do you have?
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-networking/how-many-concurrent-connections-can-i-have-to-a/6f4fa572-db2e-4446-a263-52cf32b6b518?auth=1

does the eventlog on your PC show any failed conection attempts?

[ronald_bayani]

Thanks Pete. But this are talking about multiple users concurrently . . In my case the maximum number of users accessing the shared folders at the same time, will not exceed 3 …since it’s just me,my wife and sons or sometimes a relative visiting We seldom use them at the same time. My problem is my WDTV is the only one that will start loosing these user accounts I have created over a period of any given time.My other PC and laptop can still access them using these accounts. I have about 320 folder shares totaling about 1012 movie/TV show files in them. I still have 2 accounts now that work . . .the rest are gone . . Is there a limit in the number of folders that you can share in win 7?

[mike27oct]

You likely are having a Master Browser issue. You need to know if you have a master browser assigned at all times, and what device is the master browser – and that it is a permanently assigned device, e.g. such as a router on 24/7…

A good explanation of this is found here as well as a free and excellent program that indicates your master browser.

How to Determine the Master Browser in a Windows Workgroup | Scottie's Tech.Info

So, start at this link, install the program, and search the WDTV forums for info about master browser.

Come back here if you have other questions about setting a permanent master browser.

PS, re-installing Windows was a totally unnecessary exercise, and could have caused new problems.

[ronald_bayani]

Thanks Mike. But ,I have done this already before I wrote this problem . and I only have one master browser . . .which is the my desktop PC with all my media HDDs .

[mike27oct]

OK, good, but you need a permanent master browser. The PC is only the master browser when it is on. Once you turn it off there may not be a device that can be the master browser otherwise. Then your devices that need one are at a loss and get confused.

I have a router that can be the master browser. It is an Asus router that is on 24/7. Other routers may be able to do same. Once I turned on Samba shares (SMB) in router, the router became the MB and all my missing MB problems disappeared.

[ronald_bayani]

I only have one PC with all my media in it. All our other devices don’t have a problem with connecting to anything except the WDTV player (plus). Why would you need a master browser if you have a router already that is doing the data traffic. You are making simple things complicated. It is only a home network Win 7 OS based.

[mike27oct]

@ronald_bayani

You are making simple things complicated

No, I am not making things complicated, you are, by having a gazillion windows user accounts for various video categories. This is very unorthodox and no one has ever said they have set up their system this was to use a WDTV. Frankly, this is utterly ridiculous and unnecessary.

I have had a WDTV Live Plus like you for many years, I have over 30 devices connected to my router/network, I have the system running via a Win 7 computer. At first I had MB issues, until I had a permanent MB, and ever since my WDTV (and everything else) does too. It doesn’t matter if you have one PC or four, what is happening is when your system runs right, the PC is the master browser, but if it is not (because you turned the PC off and back on later) the WDTV takes over as the MB, and it really can’t manage traffic like a real MB can.

If you install the lanscan program, you can always see what device is the MB. When things running right, the PC will be the MB, and when it doesn’t run correctly, likely the WDTV will show as the MB. The only way you can get things right again is to turn off router, WDTV and PC, and reboot in this order: router, PC and then WDTV.

The Live Plus is very particular, and it needs a MB whereas other devices usually don’t. This is what you need to do to get things working better for your situation:

Reboot devices in the order I suggested. Be sure it is running right, use lanscan to confirm the PC is the Master. Now, never turn off the PC and never turn off the WDTV. In fact, I never do turn off my WDTV and it always ready to access through one user account and all my videos are on two attached-to-WDTV HDs and more recently a genuine My Cloud NAS server. All my videos are in FOLDERS to separate them the way I want them. I also have my WDTV set up to not need passwords, and I always access my remotely stored movies via network shares.

You know what you really need (if you have jillions of videos) is a WD My Cloud NAS device (they come in various versions and capacity sizes) The one I have is not the basic My Cloud, but a higher end one called the DL2100. You can explore them all at wdc.com the lower end devices are found in My Cloud tab, and the higher end ones are in the Network Attached Storage (NAS) tab.

And, do away with many windows accounts to access the WDTV when only one is sufficient.

[WDTV_User]

Windows 7 is more than capable of handling that many share folders but the max concurrent connections is 20. The issue you might be running into is some devices connect with multiple connections. Or, this may be a limitation of the WDTV.

If this was my network, I would consider restructuring the folder shares because this will only become worse as your collection grows. I use a NAS and my collection is massively extensive and I only use 4 shares.

Shares Layout:
01_TV_Shows_A-L
02_TV_Shows_M-Z (This one and the one above are for shows that ended)
03_TV_Current
04_Movies

Under the share MOVIES are additional categories: Action, Adventure, Sci-fi, etc.

Every TV Show has a main folder with the name and year (need year for titles that are the same like Battlestar Galactica, 1977, 1980, 2012), and inside of the main folder are individual season folders.

This layout becomes more manageable for the WDTV because there are only 4 hidden database files (one on each share) that the player needs to keep track (.wd_tv). I don’t think the WDTV has a limit on how many folders it can “see” within a share, (one share has 128 folders) so this structure can grow as large as you want without the player failing to see them.

This is how I would solve it, for whatever it’s worth.

[ronald_bayani]

I have tried the lanscan already, and read your other post before.You cannot stream Bluray files wireless and expect it run smoothly, DVD files maybe. Trust me I have tried it. Cloud tech is not ideal yet for streaming Bluray to UHD .Wire is still the best.

[ronald_bayani]

Thanks. I think it is a limit of the WDTV, been thinking about restructuring it. I have 8 4TB WD HDDs which is almost full.You can fit about 142 to 145 bluray movies per drive with about 1% empty space each. If I do mine like yours, I will have more than 4 main folder shares still.
I have only 6 user accounts. I did the Movies and TV shows like yours.

1. Movies
2. TV shows
3. Animated
4. Documentary
5. Concerts
6. DVDs and Music

If I don’t separate them by user accounts ,it will be hard to navigate and takes awhile to load.

Thinking about switching to free NAS also. Thanks for your response.

[WDTV_User]

Those look like great categories to work with and I think they’ll serve you well now and into the future (also solve your problem). NAS is a great way to go because it doesn’t take up much space and it handles user accounts well. I would advise to do some serious research before purchasing because they are not all created equal. Some units slow way down as they get near their capacity. Some handle multiple connections better than others. Even user account assess varies.

For me, QNAP is my favorite for speed, installing additional apps and advanced user control level, and Synology is my runner up. (Sorry WD, your unit transfer speed is just a little too slow)

I hope you post back because I would be curious to know if your current layout is the limitation of the WDTV player.

[mike27oct]

@ronald_bayani

I have tried the lanscan already, and read your other post before.You cannot stream Bluray files wireless and expect it run smoothly, DVD files maybe. Trust me I have tried it. Cloud tech is not ideal yet for streaming Bluray to UHD .Wire is still the best.

So, what did lanscan tell you about the MB? Does it change from PC to WDTV if you turn off PC, and turn on PC on PC about a half hour later and check lanscan again? (It can take a white for the change to take place.)

Your Blu-ray comment appears to have come out of nowhere – I never mentioned BD disks. But, since your brought it up, I will reply to that. Frankly I do not waste a lot of HD real estate on BD disc files, since most take over 32GB. I just watch the BD discs. Nevertheless, I can stream BD disc content, if I first convert BD to ISO, then MKV, the WDTV can stream and play MKV files fine – even wirelessly to an iPad if the MKV is re-coded to an m4v/mp4 file with Handbrake. To stream these BD re-codings, it takes a “perfect” wireless home network and use of 5G wireless.

[ronald_bayani]

QNAPs are expensive but good. There is also Drobo which cost less. Thinking about just building one. Also Iam waiting for a new media player ,one that can stream H265 (UHD codec) , so I can encode my bluray files into a third it’s size without loosing quality and migrate them into SSDs. I will post back as soon as get time off from work to build the NAS.

[WDTV_User]

The H.265 is nothing short of amazing and I’ve been waiting for a player too (but dreading re-ripping my entire collection). I read an article back in June that Ali Corp (a leading set-top box chipset provider), announced their hybrid H.265 chipset on the Nasdaq. Hopefully soon we’ll see devices come out on the market. Sure would like to see WD surprise us with a new WDTV player.

[ronald_bayani]

You can re-rip your collection in a RAMdisk, a program that turn some of your RAMs into storage, which makes the process very fast. Many times faster than SSDs (read/Write). Hopefully Western Digital will not abandon their player program.

[WDTV_User]

Interesting concept. Always looking for good software, especially if it speeds things up. I’ll check it out, thanks.