Tony, everything on my WDTVLIVEPLUS is now working as advertised, including Network Shares. I want to thank you for sticking with me until I — with your invaluable help — got it all sorted out. For those of you who have continued to read this thread, I would like to summarize what problems I encountered, and what I did to solve the problem.
First, I believe some of my problem stems from the use of the Linksys E3000 router (per another thread on this board). I bought it because it was new and due to the physical properties of my location, I wanted the greater bandwidth and speed that came with the N standard.
My network is at home, and is simple: PC to router via Ethernet, Laptop to router via wireless, Printer to network via wireless, WDTVLIVEPLUS to network via wireless. I had a new Medialink USB wireless adapter on the WDTVLIVEPLAYER; to my knowledge it is not listed as “supported,” but it worked.
I had no functionality from WDTVLIVEPLUS out of the box except its internet connection.
To fix my system (because there were no “fixes” required to the Player; it worked fine at all times), I ended up doing the following (many intermediate steps, reboots, hair pulling, omitted).
I first had to establish my Windows 7 network as a workgroup (I thought I had already done this through Windows 7’s network wizardry, but I hadn’t). Each computer had to be listed on the other computer’s Explorer/Network display as a “computer.” Everybody had to ping. The network had to recognize the WDTVLIVEPLAYER as a device. I did not need to do anything to the E3000 to get to this stage. (Observation: I find many sites with “helpful” threads equating connecting to the Internet as “establishing a network.” Don’t be fooled).
A very important next step ---- at least for the E3000 router ---- is to assign it (through its configuration pages at 192.168.1.1) a different workgroup name than your computer’s workgroup. In my case, the computers were in WORKGROUP; I put the router in TESTGROUP.
Once you do that, you should now see your WDTVLIVEPLUS show up on two lines in your Explorer/Network view: one as a device, and one as a computer. I found that until I could see the player as a computer, there was no way to sign in to it. In other words, if you have the E3000 router, and you haven’t yet got your network to show the WDTVLIVEPLUS as a computer, DO NOT waste your time trying to sign in to Network Shares. No combination of Userids and passwords is going to work.
A summary of the settings and conditions on my Windows 7 network: In advanced sharing, I’ve set everything as has been mentioned on this board: Network Discovery - On; File and Printer sharing – On; Public Folder Sharing – On; Media Streaming is ON (there is a video on the board that advises you to turn Media Sharing OFF, but I did not); 128 bit encryption – ON; Password protected sharing – OFF, and Windows Manage Homegroup connections – ON.
A word about folders for Network Shares: you MUST configure folders to share on each computer properly. I am not going into the many machinations I went through to get my particular setup to work; let me just say that what I ended up doing was putting all my music (actual files, not shortcuts) in the “My Music” folder in my user account. I have three subfolders in there, and two of them have subfolders, etc. The only folder I marked for sharing was “My Music.” Same thing for video and pictures. How you configure these folders for sharing and permissions has been well covered already on this board (follow the instructions!). I opened my WMP12 Player and insured that in “Manage Libraries” I only included “My Music” for Music, “My Videos” for Video, etc. This has less to do with network shares but more to do with Media Servers.
Another word about naming conventions and user account sign ins. (Tony and I may have a slight disagreement on this). From the moment that my WDTVLIVEPLUS showed up in Explorer/Network, it was shown as having a network location as “PeachPine.” (The router apparently has a long list of these names it selects randomly on booting up). This turns out to be the name Windows 7 grabs FROM the router to assign a Network Name. It is ALSO the name of your Linksys E3000 Router on the network. When you access the WDTVLIVEPLAYER menu for Music, let’s say, and then work down (or up) to the “Network Shares” you should see this name (the name of the router/network — it may or may not be PeachPine on your system using the E3000). Clicking on that now gives you the famous UserID/Password login screen. Here, at least in the case of the E3000 is a potential source for confusion: what you need to do here is enter the Router’s login information. I am running WPA2 security on my router, so when I initially set my router up, I left the default values for router login AS IS, which means “Admin” in the top box, and the security passphrase in the bottom box. Now, you may have changed your log in information for your router because the security passphrase is decidedly user unfriendly, or you may not be running any security at all (not a good idea!). At one point, I tried changing the data on this screen (the router screen) to something more user friendly, but unfortunately, I can’t recall whether it created a problem or not. So I am just reporting here what finally worked for me. Once you enter the router login data in your WDTVLIVEPLUS login boxes, you get access to your networked computers; clicking on either of those gives you your Network Shares.
Here are the biggest takeaways:
- This discussion applies at least to — and perhaps to no more than — those with Linksys 3000 routers.
- No registry hacks are needed
- Windows Live ID was not an issue; it is running on both computers
- You must put the WDTVLIVEPLUS in a different workgroup than your networked computers.
- Take care and be consistent in naming Network Shares and establishing their permissions. Simpler is better.
- Sign in to your router on the WDTVLIVEPLUS account sign in page.
- I’ve found to ignore the first error message you might see on the WDTVLIVEPLUS and then revisit the screen a minute or two later. Sometimes it just takes the little box a minute or two to figure out what you want it to do.
