Remote mapping + WD My Cloud desktop app recurring login problem Win8.1

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
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Hi guys

Ah, the My Cloud - pay me an hourly wage for the amount of hours I’ve spent trying to get this device to work, please WD, it would buy me hundreds more My Clouds :slight_smile:  

Most annoying problem atm:

Travelling so can’t access drive as normal. Travelling, that’s why I bought the MC, so I could access my files without dragging archaic physical media around, WD!

Logging in at wd2go.com and mapping drive from there, surprisingly - it works! Under very specific circumstances, of course (only the Opera browser, and only when the MC is in a good mood). Well, at least it works to the extent that I can view my list of files … which at this point is amazingly encouraging :slight_smile:

Numerous problems with actually using the drive thus mapped, however. 

Native Windows search for files on the drive never completes. It may show early search results, and the green bar at the top showing search progress is at the end, but the color is still “moving” so it’s still searching - and if I try to do anything with these files, i.e. select two of them and then right-click to delete - Windows Explorer ends up “Not Responding”.

The desktop app - I imagine mapping/using through this might be faster. However, ever since the beginning, and all through my millions of factory resets, software install/uninstalls etc. - the desktop app is always saying it is “currently locked”, and it will not accept any password that I use to login to the dashboard, the wd2go.com site etc. “Forgot my password” does nothing, attempting to uninstall the desktop app causes an error message along the lines of “a problem occurred there may be a problem with the package”, re-downloading makes no difference, installing a new version of top of existing yields a similar “problem with package” message and so does a “repair” through native Windows install/uninstall. So I can’t uninstall, it won’t accept any password or password reset…

Tried searching the forums but found nothing with someone with the exact same problem - 

help much appreciated, thank you! :slight_smile:

Sophie

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Microsoft has the “joy” of absolutely corrupting WebDAV access, which is what wd2go.com uses.

WebDAV by itself is already a fully standard compliant protocol used for so many things, but Microsoft has to do their own thing, of course, which makes it a pain in the long run, to make it “seamless,” and to add “enhancements” for Microsoft-specific software like Sharepoint.

That’s my soapbox.  ;)

WD introduced the Desktop App a while back to help get around most of those limitations.   It still uses WebDAV with some of the NASes, but gets around MS’s changes and uses some of its own API to do more stuff, and IIRC, uses its own API completely for the newer NAS devices like the Cloud.

The reason that Windows Explorer says “Not Responding” is because “secretly,” in the background, it’s busy copying all those files to your local hard drive – even before you ask.  Thanks, Microsoft.   It does that because Right-Clicking a file brings up a Context-Sensitve menu – and the context depends on the type and contents of the file, and it can’t examine the types and contents of the file until it has a local copy.

If you look at your network statistics via the Task Managers “network” tab, you’ll see the network happily moving data around at the fastest rate it can – all the while leaving you to think your PC has all but hung up.

And what’s even more annoying is that those files are often left behind to occupy space on your PC’s HD in hidden folder structure.

I’m not sure about this “Currently Locked” thing.  I’ve never seen that.  Can you post a screenshot?  (That is, if you getting running again.)

1 Like
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Hi

Thanks, again, for the reply. Apparently my post has been forwarded to the support team, which is great, so I’m waiting to hear from them.

Of all the things you’re saying here, the one that scares me most is that Windows “can’t examine the types and contents of the file until it has a local copy”… so that means it will always be like this ? My dream of having a internet-accessible from-anywhere harddrive, operating just like a (slow) local drive, is therefore dead ?

It is uselessly slow at the moment, at least, and it is NOT my gear, at home I have the best (consumer…) router available the Asus RT-AC-68-U, super-fast connection, short and direct-connected as specified cat6 cables throughout, win8.1 freshly installed with all updates, the latest i7 processor and 16gb ram on my laptop, and so on …

And these files are left behind and forgotten about to occupy hard drive space ? Where are they and how can I delete them ? With SSD local disk I really don’t have space to spare…

Will post a screenshot of “Currently locked” when I work out how to take a screenshot :slight_smile:

Sophie

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When you try to use the WD My Cloud app does it ask for a My Cloud user name and password or a network user name and password. See images below.

WDMyCloudSignIn.JPG


WDMCnetsignin.JPG
WDMCnetsignin.JPG1338×309 85.7 KB


If it is asking for a network user name and password then you should try your user name and password for your home network.

Posted by,
cat0w (USA)

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Top picture

Thanks

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SophieH wrote:
Of all the things you’re saying here, the one that scares me most is that Windows “can’t examine the types and contents of the file until it has a local copy”… so that means it will always be like this?

As far as I know, yeah…  But I’m no MS expert so don’t take it to the bank.

SophieH wrote:
And these files are left behind and forgotten about to occupy hard drive space ? Where are they and how can I delete them ? With SSD local disk I really don’t have space to spare…

The location is described here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2790804

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Thank you again for that exhaustive answer!

Stumbled across an easy way around this hopeless “Please wait 2 hours while we process your request to right-click this file”:

Win8.1 explorer, at the top has new ribbon buttons, or whatever they’re called, e.g. “Move to”. Using for example this command, the file will be moved immediately, just like on a local disk. I guess they’re phasing out the right-click on account of the touch-screen … :slight_smile: