Just bought a white light 1TB MBWE, have had some fun & games configuring it which was frustrating considering I just want it super simple - purely shared storage for photos, music and home video between XP desktop, XP netbook & 10.4 Mac laptop. I haven’t installed any of the software apart from Discovery, and that was only because I couldn’t / didn’t know how to manually map the drive.
All set up on wireless ok now, visible & accessible on desktop & netbook, have dragged & dropped some photos & videos to it as an initial test. However, only having a ‘G’ wireless network, I really don’t fancy copying over the bulk of my media from desktop via wireless, due to the slow speed. Connecting desktop to router via cable isn’t possible as they are several rooms apart. I have read on other threads / posts that it is possible to connect directly between a desktop / netbook and the MBWE via ethernet / rj45 / patch cable in order to copy data more quickly. I have also read conflicting info about whether the cable needs to be a crossover or not .
I have tried this direct connection with a standard cable and a crossover cable with both XP desktop and XP netbook, both go through the motions of “acquiring network address” then after a few minutes come back with a “This connection has limited or no connectivity” message, and I can’t see the drive via Windows Explorer or My Network Places.
So my question / plea is, how do I connect directly to the drive? I’m fairly computer literate, but would appreciate an ■■■■■’s guide / step-by-step as I’m not that hot on networks, IP addresses and all the other stuff that I’ve been reading about and increasing my confusion with.
Don’t call yourself and ■■■■■, all of us mortals have questions that need to be asked. Once you connect the drive to the ethernet port on your computer all you need to to is this :
Click Start>Run.
Type \mybookworld, and then click OK (if the device name was changed, type
\yournewdevicename).
The My Book World Edition directory displays (Public, Configuration, and
Download folders).
From here you can just right click and map the network drive , but if you want to configure it , proceed with this:
Double-click the Configuration folder.
Double-click index.html. The configuration login screen displays.
BTW I’ve found this info on page 175 of the user manual. About the cable an standard cable will work fine.
Thanks for the reply and directions, have successfully connected & transferred photos / videos / music from Desktop & Netbook, just need to upgrade Mac laptop OS and I can then do the same with that. Still find it a bit weird that it works fine (and super fast!) even though the connection is showing as “limited or no connectivity”?
Another thing to mention, I think it may take some minutes for the drive to ‘initialise’ when connected this way, as when I entered \mybookworld in Run shortly after physically connecting / powering on the drive, I kept getting a message saying something like “path cannot be found”. I tried it on netbook, desktop, with a combination of standard & crossover cables, but still the same message. Then nearing the end of my patience & options I tried it once more and hey presto the Explorer window opened showing all the folders. Grrr - hopefully won’t need to do it again as from now on I will be saving the odd photo or MP3 here & there via wifi - speed not an issue.
Glad it worked. Yes it does take a couple of minutes to boot once connected to power, once the drive is mapped and connected for the first time it will be a lot easier for it to be accessed again.
I have the exact same problem/query and have tried using the Run cmd as you suggested, but even after leaving it for an hour I still get the network path unavailable message.
Hi Wizer, yup a connection is showing in Network Connections as an etyhernet connection (Public Network) and I have tried changing it to a Private network, but still no way of accessing the HDD - any more thoughts?
Nope, can’t map it - same result/message as through Run: \MyBookWorld
In Network sharing centre the connection is present and under status the data is going in one direction (sent) but nothing under the ‘Received’ side, the IP address is 169.254.197.239
