Over the past week or so, I’ve been having an intermittent problem with my WDTV Live Plus not connecting to my WIRED network consistently. Now the problem is constant. I just can’t connect and the WDTV reboots itself very often while I’m trying to do so (it also sometimes freezes, rather than rebooting, but not as frequently)
When I try to connect to the network automatically, I get an “Unable to Obtain IP Address” error. When I try to connect tot the network manually, I get a “Incorrect DNS Server Address” message when testing the connection.
The manual settings that I used are:
IP - 192.168.1.4
Subnet - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.1.1
DNS - 192.168.1.1
My router (Verizon Fios MI424WR) appears to be seeing the WDTV Live Plus at 192.168.1.4 with a name of “new-host” and a status of “inactive”. If I remember correctly, it used to see it with a name that actually described it (I don’t remember if is specifically said WDTV Live Plus or not).
Nothing has changed on my network and both a DVR and Blu-ray player that are conencted to the same switch are having no network problems.
I don’t know where to turn. I’m assuming that the rebooting problem is related to the WDTV trying to connect to the network, but I don’ t know if that’s a valid assumption. Today, when I tired watching something that’s on an attached hard drive, (after at least 10 start-up reboots) it rebooted 10 minutes into the movie.
I have to believe that the problem is the WDTV, bacause I can’t find anything else that could be wrong.
Please help.
Edit - one last thing, I’ve tried pinging the WDTV from my router. The test failed.
Update - after some more tinkering, I changed my subnet mask to 255.255.0.0 and can now connect to the network. I can see and use Internet Media and I can see all of my ohter devices in Media Servers,. However, when I select Video/Network Share, I still get nothing., the screen just stays on the Network Share Icon.
It appears that I’m heading in the right direction, but I’m stuck at another roadblock.
I ran into this problem using a FIOS router, and I have know the fios routers are ■■■■… however I found a fix that works. First you have to manually configure the network. Create an ip address that won’t be likely to duplicate, I used 192.168.1.99, not you cannot use any ip address on a fios router between 192.168.1.100 and 192.168.1.150 as they are used by the set-top boxes.
Then use the standard subnet mask 255.255.255.0
and the gateway 192.168.1.1
Now here is the change, do not use the internal DNS, it’s ■■■■… instead I use Google DNS, it works, even if Google does track it.
So in the DNS field put 8.8.8.8
After doing this I appear to have full network connectivity on my windows 7 and vista computers, and full access to internet media.
Interesting stuff. I have FiOS 40/40 service, and have none of the issues you describe.
I use the network 10.0.0.0 / 255.555.255.0 on my network (it’s faster to type. :) )
I *DEPEND* on the internal DNS of the FiOS router to run my network and DHCP services. Most of my devices are STATIC DHCP, and I have, at last count, about 25 devices on my network. The internal DNS works just fine.
I am using an Actionec MI-424 Rev D, with the latest firmware of course.
