Lost network connect every 5-10 mins

I have a WD live box using the certified wireless usb adapter to connect. Every ten minutes I get “device has lost connection to the network”. My wireless router is 54g and all my other wireless computers work fine in the house. I have used every channel possible. I have tried fixed wireless speeds. I changed the IP address. The certified usb adapter is an N?? I’ve tried a second USB adapter, same model with the same results.

Once I loose the connection, I can go right back in and auto connect and I’m right back up and can restart.

Does anyone have any ideas? I don’t know what to try at this point. My connect shows to be strong, but something is killing it every 10 mins.

When I first got the WD Live box the connection failures didn’t seem as bad as they do now since I downloaded new firmware. Is anyone else having network connectivity problems with new firmware?

I’m having the same problems.  Play a movie fine and 4-5 mins later, it comes up with the message “There was a problem connecting to the network.  The device could not connect to the network.”

I get this for wireless and cabled networks.

I have updated to the latest software.

Have you had any luck finding out the source of the problem?

Here are some suggestions. Use an extension cable so you can re-position the usb wifi dongle higher. Check your router’s logs for clues on what is happening (make sure the logs show all or whatever your router options are to show all about wireless connections). Watch signal strength shown by your router. Assign fixed ip address to the WD TV Live using your router reservation option. Use G instead of N to see if connection is more solid.

I think eventually you are going to want a wired connection to play high bandwidth videos. You might consider doing this sooner rather than later (that’s what I did eventually). Video via wireless is always going to have interference and cause headaches to play videos reliably, IMHO…  Al

Mine does it for wired and wireless.

I think it may be down to the files and the codecs needed.  I played one file and it dropped every few minutes but tried a different one and it played for 45 mins without disconnecting.

I have the same problem. It is not disconnecting to the network but somehow just the network shares. When this happens, I go to YouTube and I can stream from YouTube. WD TV Live is somehow still connected to the router and the Internet but it is somehow dropping the connection to the network shares on my PC.

I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit by the way. Wierd thing is, this used to work fine until I upgraded the firmware. Any help?

I don’t think anyone knows why this is happening.

I’m just putting it down to this WD LIve thing is a piece of $hit…

The following was a cover letter I was intending to attach to my WD TV LIVE while returning it to FRY’s.  Now I am not too sure whether this was a problem with my specific unit, or a general design/firmware flaw with the LIVE in general. 

It is incumbent on WD to monitor this forum, and acknowledge problems like this, and give us some expectation of a problem resolution.  Clearly I am not the only one with this problem. 

Problem with WD TV LIVE

Saturday, March 20, 2010

David H. Straayer
xxxx

This appears to be a time-based intermittent.  I can see why the item was re-stocked and put on the shelf for re-sale.  A brief checkout would show no problems.

Here is my experience:

I hooked the WD TV LIVE into my network using a Fry’s 100’ Cat 5 cable. 

The LIVE was able to find and be found by the network just fine.

I used the Video/Folders to navigate to a folder with VOB files in it.  I selected the first VOB file and initiated play.

It played perfectly … for about 5 minutes.  Then the LIVE put up a message indicating that the network connection was lost.

I recycled power on the LIVE, and it immediately regained network connection.  I navigated to the same folder location and started play.  I was offered the opportunity to resume play where I had left off; I chose to resume.

It played for about 5 minutes perfectly, resuming pretty much where it had left off.  After about 5 minutes, it abruptly stopped and put up the message indicating that the network connection was lost.

I repeated this cycle about 6 or 7 times, timing the play time with my watch.   All of the play times were between 5 and 6 minutes, except for the very last one, which stopped with the network connection message at about 3 ½ minutes.

Every time the network connection was lost, it was immediately regained after a power cycle on the LIVE.  There was never any noticeable problem elsewhere on my home network. 

I conclude that there is a hardware (or possibly firmware) problem with this unit.  A quick check of it will never show any problem, since it takes between 5 and 6 minutes of playing time for it to lose network connection.

I expect Fry’s to honor “the full manufacturer’s warranty” by replacing the unit with a function unit at no extra cost to me.

Sincerely,

David H. Straayer

I almost hate to post this, but maybe it will help (and, if not, please don’t shoot the messenger).

I have no issues at all streaming 1080p wireless from my network.  No special tricks, tips or whatever.  I do stream only mkv files (encoded with Handbrake) and I don’t have an encrypted network or any other security on it (something to try if you have enabled security on your router).  Now – there are times it doesn’t connect properly (in those cases I need to reboot) but once connected I can watch even very long movies (3+ hours) without any issues at all.

My network shares are on a dual core Pentium PC which is otherwise idle.

Hi,  I’m having the same problem.  My network shares will disconnect, but after streaming some video from youtube for a few minutes, I can go back and my network shares are there again and I can watch a full movie with no problems after the initial disconnect.

dhstraayer:  Are you trying to get your money back or a different unit?

I would love to get my money back but cant see the shop giving it back cause of this problem…

I have now resolved this issue with a workaround. 

I set the IP addresses of every computer on my network to fixed IPs in the range 192.168.0.23 …  192.168.0.27.

It takes a little care to set fixed IPs.  If you’re not sure, you might want to Google the topic.

The router is, as usual 192.168.0.1, and I let the WD TV Live  have its IP address assigned automatically. 

This appears to have fully resolved the “Lost Network Connection” bug, at least for me, for now.

My best guess is that an IP collision occurred whenever a computer on the network tried to go out and check for new mail every 5 minutes.  That’s a somewhat wild guess, but the solution is working for me.

Now this just leaves me with three problems to resolve:

1 no outline on the subtitle text, so the text is hard to read when the background goes to a similar color.  I thought I saw something on another thread about that, will research it.

2 I still can’t “folder access” my Win 7 computer.  No problem getting to my XP-based server.  Any attempt to connect to the Win 7 machine gives me a username/password rejection.  Probably some Win 7 protection thing.

3 Navigation is tricky.  Too much fast forward or rewind “breaks the firmware”, and you can never access the movie on which you did it  again until you do a “factory reset”.  Finding out about the 10 minute forward and back trick (In the manual, but an unexpected user interface trick) mostly resolved this issue.  Never go faster than 2X.  When in 2X FF or REV, you can jump forward  or back 10 minutes  with the NEXT or PREV button.  Who’d have thought?

dhstraayer wrote:

2 I still can’t “folder access” my Win 7 computer.  No problem getting to my XP-based server.  Any attempt to connect to the Win 7 machine gives me a username/password rejection.  Probably some Win 7 protection thing.

3 Navigation is tricky.  Too much fast forward or rewind “breaks the firmware”, and you can never access the movie on which you did it  again until you do a “factory reset”.  Finding out about the 10 minute forward and back trick (In the manual, but an unexpected user interface trick) mostly resolved this issue.  Never go faster than 2X.  When in 2X FF or REV, you can jump forward  or back 10 minutes  with the NEXT or PREV button.  Who’d have thought?

 

 

    • *> Make sure in Win 7 you add an “everyone” share to your folders (this bit me to, as the XP default IS everyone).  You can also turn the shared folder password off (which I highly recommend).  Once I did this I had no issues with my own Win 7 machine (it is indeed a Win 7 “protection thing”).> I don’t have any problems with 8x FF/REV but I use the mkv container strictly.  I’m just mentioning it because if you aren’t it might help to do so.

Try your power options, set your hard drive not to shut off for 5 hours and not to go into sleep mode for 5 hours.

I am getting the same exact problems now. This is what I notice. When I power up my home theatre the WDTV Live comes on automatically (I wish we could disable that) and about 3-5 minutes later my entire wireless network goes down. Any pc connected to it cannot find the network either. After it comes back on again eveyrything works like it should.

I get this using network shares or Media server.

You can see my setup here along with settings here (need to update as its not working like it should):

http://www.amazon.com/1-Way-to-Stream-1080p-HD-movies-Wirelessly/lm/R2WSOOSTQSQW1M/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full

I have 2 wdtv lives connected in 2 different places and both trigger the wireless network to go down.

I have everything in the house set up on its own IP address.

Why would the WDTV Live trigger the network to go down every time ?