I’ve found a reliable workaround. Try it out and post back to let me know if it works for you.
I have three computers on my network with video files. Each is running a different version of Windows. Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly at all), the connection to the old PC running Windows 2000 NEVER DROPS. The computers running Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista Home Premium both get disconnected from the WDTV after about 5 minutes.
Here’s the workaround:
After booting the WDTV, go to Network Shares and select one of the computers that disconnects from the network.
DO NOTHING for the next 5 minutes
After following these steps, I have been able to watch videos of any length from EITHER of my two computers without interruption.
If I turn WDTV off, I have to repeat these steps. But it works every time.
I called WD Customer Support and talked to a 2nd level tech about the problem. He said it is related to Samba. I don’t know Samba from my elbow, but I reported my workaround to him and he said he would pass it on to Microsoft.
Here’s hoping! I haven’t turned the unit off in a week, so maybe after the next firmware update I can start powering off again.
PS: There should be a clue for someone more knowledgable than me in the fact that Windows 2000 never disconnects.
I dont know if this will help anyone but here’s my experience. Similar to earlier posts
Running Win 7. connect WDTV Live through wired network. Previously my network would drop every 10 minutes into a movie. I changed my workgroup name to WORKGROUP and it works without flaw.
another problem i ran into is the network drops and turning the Live off/on does not help. I found out that my buddy connected to my network w/ his laptop caused the issue. once he turned off his laptop and reboot my win 7 it came back up. i did not go further into investigating the issue but i will when i have time.
“…but I reported my workaround to him and he said he would pass it on to Microsoft…”
I’m sorry but I can’t help but to laugh at this remark. The support person give you one of the most bogus brush offs. Passing the buck it’s called.
It has nothing to do with Samba per-se, but the implementation of Samba in the WDTV. There is a bug, plain and simple. WD needs to do more testing using typical setups, not a clean-room setup like they most likely have.
The big problem here is that they may not be able to reproduce the problem in-house, or the contracting house that is developing the f1rmware, whatever the case may be. Even if they can reproduce, it may elude them when turning on logging/debugs, where the program flow timing changes to the point where things work much better, or even properly
I’m basing this assumption on the different work-arounds that are posted.
The WDTV seems to work properly if I let the WDTV Live box idle for a few minutes after powering it up. Since this box is in the bedroom, we don’t use to on a regular basis so the tv and wd box is plugged into a power bar that gets switch off.
Is it’s walk in the room, turn on the bar and WDTV box, brush teeth, etc., watch a show. At least it promotes dental hygene!
My connection seems to be dropping every so often as well. I’m using the wireless USB adapter D-Link DWA-120 with a LInksys WRT54GL v1.1 router. I’ve tried reconfiguring the router and even moving the WDTV closer to the router with no luck of improving my chances of maintaining wireless connectivity.
When the connection drops, I would go to “Network Settings → Check Connection” on my WDTV and it shows that there is an IP address, but the DNS Server failed. For those of you that are dropping connections, is this what is happening to you as well?
Usually, I just go back into the favorites and reconnect to the wireless and it seems to work fine for a couple more minutes and then the same thing happens again.
When playback fails due to a “drop”, I can go into YouTube right after the disconnect and play videos with no problems. The box will not see any Windows shares after that until I power cycle the unit.
Just wanted to share my experiences with the network drop every 5 mins or so…
I have 2 desktop pc`s (both still XP and a laptop (vista) connected via wire with my router/switch directly or via powerlan.
Both desktop pc`s host shared folders with content to be displayed by my wd live hd player.
I noticed that for maybe 75% of the content that I was playing on the wd live, the player gave an error that the network share could not be accessed after a couple of minutes. Reboots of the wd live player did not help.
Since I had a hunch that the powerlan setup might be causing the interference, I also shared some media files on the laptop. Unfortunately same result. Now as I did not have a lot of time to check things futher, I stumbled upon something strange last weekend.
If the wd live player is “ON” and then any of my 3 pc`s is also switched on, I can watch media files with no interruption.
However, just out of curiosity I switched on my pc`s before the wd live player and then I got: yes, network share drops?!
This looks like a very goofy reason to me, but I`ll try to find out more soon.
If you have multiple Windows PCs running on your network, try picking one that is cabled and on most of the time, then for the rest disable the Windows service “Computer Browser”.
A Windows PC that is connected to the network wirelessly could have the connection dropped from time to time, depending on the timing, when that happens the PC may force an election to decide which PC is the master browser for the domain or workgroup. During this time the WDTV could lose the connection to shares.
All of my PC’s are connected to the router via cable. The WDTV Live is connected to the router via wireless.
The only computer that never disconnects is running Windows 2000.
In the spirit of the season (it’s Christmas Eve as I write), I will happily supply each of you with a copy of Windows 2000 that you can install on the computer you have dedicated to sharing media for your WDTV Live. Remember that Windows 2000 is no longer published, nor is it supported by Microsoft, and it is therefore increasingly rare and valuable. Windows 2000 is a vital necessity to the continued trouble-free enjoyment of your WDTV Live investment.
Being a generous person with a pure heart, I will provide the software to you for a mere $1,000.
Feel free to think it over before sending your order.
Hey, this is better than what WD is offering for a solution (which is basically nothing!)
I’d like to chime in and add my vote to the “HEY WD _ FIX THIS MAJOR BUG!” theme.
I’m a very experienced computer networking expert and this is very clearly a bug in the WD software, it’s not all of our networks or versions of Windows (and even if it was some “Windows thing” - YOU fix your product WD, don’t expect MS to fix every version of Windows to conform to your issues).
Simply put, for no good reason, this box drops it’s connection every 4-5 minutes without warning. EVERY other device I have on the network works 100.0% reliably, yes 100.0% and I’m not doing anything weird. Got XP boxes,one Vista laptop and 2 Windows 7 machines, all fo them talk to each other (and some TVs and Blu-Ray players and Xbox 360 and other media players) without any issue whatsoever, from 100 to gigabit speed. Some wired and some wirelessly. None of them have any issues - except the WD TV Live - Where do you think I’m pointing my finger?
Unfortunately, I don’t think any WD techs, or anyone else from WD, reads these posts.
I got XP Media Sharing to work through the settings in Windows Media Player. I stays connected nicely, but I can’t see DVD files (VOB’s) and MKV files through the WDTV Live when I connect that way. Now can anyone help with THAT?
I double-checked and found the folders containing the DVD files were missing from the library. I removed and re-added the folders to watch in Media Center, and it then found the folders with the DVD structure. But the ISO files are not being seen. Must need some tweak of Media Center to recognize ISO and MKV files.
If I could get this accomplished, it would take care of my needs for what I need WDTV Live to do and let me work around the **bleep** network share disconnect problem!
I am experiencing the same problem. About 3 or 4 minutes into watching a video over a network share. The problem is intermittent. Sometimes I can watch a movie right through without a problem. Here is some further information:
Have several computers connected through Linksys WRT54GS - some wireless and some wired. All network shares are lost each time except to one device, a Network Storage Device (Maxtor Shared Storage Plus) running a form of NT Server. All other computers are running either Vista or XP. The Maxtor is connected wired but so is another computer running XP that gets dropped.
Sometimes the WD Live TV finds the shares again after a few minutes and sometimes I have to use the Automatic feature of the Network Settings to reconnect. It may work better when the WD Live TV refinds the shares again without resetting the network connection.
Not sure if this is a pattern yet but it seems like after 2 drops, once connected for the third time it works? (this has happened twice).
WesternDigital support has no suggestions other then to try turning off all computers on the network and then turning them on one at a time to see which one is causing the problem (if it is one of them). This will take time. They are suggesting the problem is the network settings on one of the computers on the network.
ggiffin, this sounds similar to what I experience with my network. My only PC that does not disconnect is running Windows 2000, which is probably very similar to your NT server software. I’ve decided to move all my videos to the Win2K machine to avoid all these problems. Even Vista running Media Center has weird problems, and nothing is as straight-forward as the Win2k solution.
I feel like I’m slowly moving back to installing a PC in the living room and selling the WDTV Live on eBay.
Windows 7 needed a Divx addon to see the mkv’s in the media player…I suggest you google up the same issue for your version of WMP to see if you have the proper software installed.
Some have said to unistall all codecs and reinstall only what’s needed!
I read on another forum that changing your PCs’ Workgroup to “WORKGROUP” will solve this issue. The posts mention that the WD device trys to act as the Master Controller of the workgroup if none is found and causes issues with the connection.
This worked for some people, but this solution didn’t work out for me…
Some say that the issue is still there, but their connection time went up, while others say that it fixed their issue…
and a laptop (vista) connected via wire with my router/switch directly or via powerlan.
