That is exactly my solution. Actually I don’t turn the unit off at all and have no problem accessing any of my shares on the network (3 PC and 1 laptop running XP).
I didn’t changed my workgroup name nor I did any other stuff described here.
Happy New Year to you all!
Cheers!
Another thing I noticed is that if I have a PC that is turned on in the network, my connection doesnt disconnect on WD TV Live, but when I don’t have any PC on the network that are on, I disconnect very often.
This raises issues when I’m trying to stream off my NAS FileServer, SmartStor NS4300…
I just tested if WD HD TV Live is on a network without a Windows PC, it will disconnect often when using wireless.
Here is my setup:
---------------------------
Firmware: 1.01.11
USB Wireless : DWA-125
Router: WRT54GL
Distance from Router: 2 feet
Scenario #1:
----------------------------
Windows 7 PC: OFF
Windows 7 Workgroup: Workgroup
SmartStor 4300N NAS: ON
SmartStor 4300N NAS Workgroup: Workgroup
Wireless: ON
Scenario Runs: 5
Disconnects before/after 20 minutes
Scenario #2:
----------------------------
Windows 7 PC: ON
Windows 7 Workgroup: Diffgroup
SmartStor 4300N NAS: ON
SmartStor 4300N NAS Workgroup: Diffgroup
Wireless: ON
Hasn’t disconnected for the past 3 hours…
Scenario #3:
----------------------------
Windows 7 PC: ON
Windows 7 Workgroup: Workgroup
SmartStor 4300N NAS: ON
SmartStor 4300N NAS Workgroup: Workgroup
Wireless: ON
Hasn’t disconnected for the past 3 hours…
Conclusion:
I always thought that it might have been that my wireless was disconnecting or WD HD TV Live was acting weird because of my Workgroup Name. Now it seems like it’s just acting weird if there is no Windows Machine on. I hope this is fixed in the next firmware…
Enough is enough. I have changed all computers and storage devices to Workgroup. Watched one movie without a hitch this afternoon. Tried to watch a second one tonight and the network kept dropping, after about 8 times, I got a USB drive and copied the movie to it and plugged it directly into the WD Live TV, voila HD movie with surround sound, subtitles and no drops. Was connecting through Linksys WRT54GS to Network Storage Device (Maxtor Shared Storage Plus) running a form of NT Server - with wires. This used to be the only device left on the network when it was dropping before, now it is dropping along with the Windows XP computers and only the Vista machine is left on the network. No rhyme or reason to the symptoms and the “Workgroup” solution definitely does not work for me.
This needs to be solved in a lab with technical experts and equipment that can sniff out what is happening.
If this network problem were solved, this would be a kickass device.
Bump Bump Bump
ggiffin,
Have you tried this?
Turn on the player and LEAVE IT ALONE for about 15 or 20 minutes, then see if you can stream video from pc to player over network without dropping connection. Works every time for me.
likes2stare wrote:
ggiffin,
Have you tried this?
Turn on the player and LEAVE IT ALONE for about 15 or 20 minutes, then see if you can stream video from PC to player over network without dropping connection. Works every time for me.
That solution worked for me for a while, then I couldn’t connect to either of my two PC’s at all.
I’ve found two things that work so far:
I agree with ggiffin, this should be solved by Western Digital, not we consumers who bought this bloody device on the understanding that it worked as advertised. Western Digital has violated the contract we entered into with them when we purchased the unit.
The only way to get a business like WD to feel our pain is to hurt their bottom line. There are two ways to do that:
This WILL get their attention.
*en masse: in a mass; all together; as a group: The people rushed to the gate en masse.
One sure fire way is to hook up an external drive. While I have no issues at all using wmp media server I can’t use the networked shared folder option.
However I can and do transfer files across the network to the hooked up external USB2 drive.
Transfers are surprisingly fast and connectivity is solid.
So, to summerize, WD Live connected to USB external drive and Wired Ethernet.
Window7 finds said WD Live and drag and drop files to the USB drive over aforementioned weird ehthernet connection…no more issues!
A bonus to this wired connection…I can connect to the WD Live USB drive from a Popcorn Hour that is located elsewhere in the house.This allows me to have yet another TB of storage available without having to have my pc on…
One more thing…if any would consider an external drive option, can I recommend the Thermaltake BlacX and if you go that route consider also the Duet model…this gives 2 nice features. 1. Esata 2. It supports 2 2TB drives for a total of 4 TB on one caddy…now admit it…you gotta like that!!
I also had problems with dropping network shares after 4 mins or so.
I am running Windows XP.
To fix the problem, i changed the workgroup to WORKGROUP (although when i just did this, i couldnt seem to see the network at all!!)
Then i enabled teh 2 services Network DDE and Network DDE DSDM.
Since doing that i have had no issues and have watched hours of video without issue>
Strange, lets hope they fix it properly in the next firmware.
Based on all the previous posts, I don’t think the workgroup setting has anything to do with it.
I spent several hours to find the reason when and why this Problem happens, but i didn’t find the reason.
My conclusion is:
The workgroup has nothing to do with this problem. Even if WDTVLive is the only device in “workgroup” and all other PCs are in another workgroup, this problem appears.
Even if the WDTV is in another workgroup the workgroup of the PCs is cleared
I didn’t find a trigger for this beheavior
The DDE Services can’t be the solution because they are not implemented after XP
It doesn’t matter if the sharing of the WDTVLive is activated or not.
My investigations with browstat.exe showed a very stange behavior of the browselist:
In all cases my Notebook (WinXP SP3) or the Netbook(WinXP SP3) has been the master browser of the workgroup and never the WDTVLive, (because of the higher OSLevel). So far so good.
After different time periods the PC from which the movie was played, disappeared from the Workgroup and the WDTV displayed the error message. Then all other PCs disappeared from the workgroup.
The really strange thing is, that even the masterbrowser self disappears from the list and then the browselist is empty.
browstat.exe says, that there is a Master browser (my notebook) an 0 servers.
The only thing that now helps is to disable and then enable the networkinterfaces of the Notebooks and the game begins again.
I tried the firmware from b-rad to see what happens on the WDTVLive and found out, that the networkshares are mounted over the IP and are still available even if the device says that it can’t connect to the network share.
It seams that it only believes to the browselist and not to the mounted shares.
But i wasn’t able to find out how the mechanism works, but it’s not my task to find this out because WD know how this things work.
Final words:
Nowerdays every network device, that use windows shares is plug&play and works in a windows network and so should it it be with the WDTVLive.
So WD is aked to solve the problem very quick.
I bought the WDTVLive because of the networking ability to play media from a NAS.
If SMB is the only way to connect to shares and that is not reliable the device is useless.
(Mediaservers are no alternative because of the limitations[i.e. VOBs])
Waiting for a corrected firmware …
Chief
Chief wrote:
I spent several hours to find the reason when and why this Problem happens, but i didn’t find the reason.
My conclusion is:
- The DDE Services can’t be the solution because they are not implemented after XP
I agree with all your conclusions, but #4 did seem to cure the XP problem. It persists with my Vista PC.> But i wasn’t able to find out how the mechanism works, but it’s not my task to find this out because WD know how this things work.
Final words:
Nowerdays every network device, that use windows shares is plug&play and works in a windows network and so should it it be with the WDTVLive.
So WD is aked to solve the problem very quick.
I bought the WDTVLive because of the networking ability to play media from a NAS.
If SMB is the only way to connect to shares and that is not reliable the device is useless.
(Mediaservers are no alternative because of the limitations[i.e. VOBs])
Waiting for a corrected firmware …
Chief
I’m with you 100%. We should call WD’s help line and demand to know when this will be fixed. If they cannot tell us, then ask for a RMA (return merchandise authorization) and threaten to send you player back. Then they will get the message: they have a BIG problem on their hands!
I’ve actually got ahold of WD support to find out that nobody has even opened up a trouble ticket with them. I’m not getting a clear answer if they are even addressing this problem. I’ve pointed them to this form (which they should be monitoring if they where a real tech support shop) as well as AVSforums where this problem has been reported numerous times and numers ways.
Let’s all call in and report this… I know it’s painful to get ahold of somebody on their help line but it appears to be the only way to get their attention…
also just to be clear, I’m having this problem in 3 machines that are running Vista, and Xp sp3. It doesn’t mater who is Master Browser the WDTVLive box still drops connections. I can share files seamlessly between the 3 windows mahines without a problem.
I just received my ticket number and it is 010310-6975132. I recommend everybody call into them and reference this ticket number. The tech also did the ol pass off and wants me to call in on Monday so I can be transferred to Level 2 support. I want to be sure that they are aware of this problem and are addressing it in their next release. otherwise we need to all ask for an RMA number.
I logged a ticket with WD support on Dec 28. Ticket 122809-6959707 . They wanted me to experiment with my network by turning on and off all the computers to see which one was causing the problem (an assumption on their part that one of them was). Second level support is where to go. Use weitekamper’s ticket number.
As I implied in my previous post. No retail customer should need to be fooling around with Windows Services, registry setting etc in order to get this device to work. This is a job for a lab with networking experts.
Bump bump Bump! (is WD monitoring this topic?). I guess we’ll see on Monday
FWIW, I’ve had a very stable experience after the first couple days of use, never had any network dropout after connecting etc… however, the first 2-3 days I did have some instability issues, and I more or less drew these conclusions:
if you have anything “weird” in your network setup it will affect your stability badly. Dual boots seem to cause problems, especially if both OS’s have the same IP and/or name. I think one of the things that did the trick for me was changing the PC name and IP for each OS, so that the WDTV will detect the same PC after a reboot as a different one, and not mistake things.
the few times I got those dropouts, I had both of my PC’s disconnect at the same time, so whatever the problem was it wasn’t simply that the WDTVLIVE couldn’t detect one of the PC’s, it seemed like it got a totally messed up picture of what was connected to the network and simply copped out.
even though now I have a perfectly stable setup after connecting to a share, I still get sometimes what I call a “cold start”, where it will not see any of the shares. So far it’s always got fixed after rebooting, but when it happens it doesn’t seem to fix itself if I don’t turn off the power. It would be great if whatever the WDTV does to detect what’s on the network, it would do it more often
something that seemed very weird to me… the last time I got a network dropout, when I was still figuring things out to make it a bit more stable, there was absolutely nothing that would fix it, not even powering off the WDTV, restarting the PC’s one by one etc… the only thing that fixed it was a router reset. Both PC’s and the WDTVLIVE have a static IP, so that had nothing to do with renewing the IPs.
I talked to second level support a couple of weeks ago, and I posted what they told me in this thread, a few pages back. Basically, they said “We’re working closely with Microsoft to solve it.” See how little progress we’ve made?
If WD support monitors this thread, they do so in stealth mode. I’ve yet to see a reply from someone on their staff.
I suggest we all get our own ticket numbers. Then, when the support staff has their weekly meetings (I’m assuming they do, and at least that frequently), they will see they have a bucket full of complaints about this issue and will do something about it.
Please tell us about your interactions with WD 2nd level support here. Meanwhile, I’ll try to dig up the ticket number they gave me when I called in. I think they did…
post the link to the support area so that all of us can get moving on this thing!
I have tried one last thing. Based on the post from Tooleman I made some registry changes to the XP Computer connected via Wire to our wireless router.
see http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=3251.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters
set the following values:
IsDomainMaster to TRUE (changed from FALSE)
MaintainServerList to YES (changed from AUTO)
I haven’t seen any network drops to any of the XP machines or the NAS running Windows NT Server but I am unable to see the Vista machine from the WD LIVE TV. It does not show in the network neighbourhood of the other machines either but I can browse to it directly from the XP computers.
This is my final experiment. Can’t waste any more of my time on this stuff. Its someone else’s job.
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en tells you how to contact WD for support.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php is the link to the WD Knowledgebase. There are tabs for asking a question here via email, too. Look in the Knowledgebase for answers, then contact WD if you don’t get satisfaction. I have done this and gotten replies. Their helpfulness has been variable, though.
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