Unsure what to do here. WD Live on a domain got it working after 2 days - partially

Okay I got these as a recommendation from a friend. I ended up buying 3 devices and I have to admit this has been a big issue trying to get it all taken care of.

  1. I am running a home domain setup. Most people do not run this so it was interesting to see this was reliant on Netbios and having to enable some features on my domain I had strictly kept off prior to buying these.

  2. So this all solves my devices not found issue and I then find a second item that indicates you need ot hchange the workgroup on ALL of your devices to be the same as your domain.

I now 3 devices all three of which can connect to the domain and get to my folders but then I have to work out access.

I then put in my administrators ID into my WD live units and POOF there is all my media I want to acess staring at me in all my glory. I then go one step forward and put the shares directories into the My Media section using the options. Woohoo I now no longer have to access them as file and I am able to access them through My media.

Now it all falls FLAT on its face. After I linked it to the Media I noticed the first issue. The number of files (I have about 200 in multiple folders on this share) My media is only showing 103. There is a huge file difference (and YES I have just my media files in there so they should show up with close to the same file numbers I don’t have junk files in this that My media my not recognize)… So I decide to wait awhile figuring it may be indexing. now I hit my next issue. The password after being left for a bit will not let me “relog back on” ot the network share.

So what am I doing right now? if the WD Live is on for any period of time I go into Files and it is blank and will not even get past the Winbdows Share selection Once I pick the Server it hsows no content available. I then have to go into my WD TV Live Setup and then into netowrk setup and then I have to clear the login information. After this I go in and put the exact same login information I had put in the time before (and have not changed, in fact its the same login I logged into this PC with) into the console. This then allows me to go back into the Files section and I can see the share and thus the files in the share again. I am able to play from files but the Media section never populates fullyy up to the number that is there.

I wanted a device that is easy for my family to use but right now the only one able to use it is me because I have to go through about 5 different screesn and steps just go get it functional (but not fully).

Can anyone point me to how to get this device to ALWAYS do a login and retain the user ID and password when I CLEARLY check the remember me box as well as a way to make all the media show directly into the media section so I don’t have ot worry about the files option at all?

Thanks for posting your experiences.

My setup is different, but I do rely on playing media from Windows network shares, so I’ll tell what’s different in my setup:

  1. Media library is disabled (I don’t have tons of media, and it’s in a fairly logical folder setup, so I don’t really need it)

  2. Windows share permissions are R/W for user “EVERYONE”.  That way the default “Anonymous” password on the SMP doesn’t have to be changed.  Write access probably isn’t required, but it works and I don’t want to mess with all this anymore.

  3. I don’t run a domain, so everything’s on WORKGROUP.

Obviously #3 doesn’t apply to you, and #1 or #2 may not be a compromise that you want to make.

For what it’s worth, I have had only one minor problem with SMB since installing 1.11.14 (four of six shared folders disappeared).  It was solved by a cold reboot, and it has not happened again.  In previous firmware revs, the only way I could get Windows shares to be reliable was to completely power down the SMP after each use. 

The drawback of #1 is that customizations don’t work.  I can’t edit the list of “favorite” services, Netflix always asks if I want the “Grown Up” or “Kids” interface, etc.

Thanks for the response and I relalize I forgto that I didn’t even mention the share permissions *hands on forehead*

I too put in Everyone for R and W but the everyone is of course authenticated to the domain users. I am wondering about this Anonymous access and domains as well. maybe this one here is just the part I need to know about. I just REALLY am scared about enabling Anonymous logins onto a domain. (you know the security guru in me screams turning this on is like handing over a key to a contractor and not entirely being sure if the contractor may make other keys allowing someone in I don’t want in through a side door rather than my front door).

I don’t care if its in Media or library as long as it just stays! I was so happy I could delete items from the file share just fine when authenticated and before when using my PS3 media server I could not do that Ih ad to go to the computer and delete it off from there.

At this moment I have Everyone Full control to the share and Everyone Full control to the media I do not have Anonymous_User added at all. Is this required for a odmain setup? I didn’t see anything about it being required.

You may be blazing a new trail with a domain, and I hope someone else sharper than me comes along.  I have only the most basic understanding of domain permissions.

I don’t know if this applies to the SMP, but I have several machines at work that are domain computers, but we usually use local accounts to log in.  When I want to access a share on different machine in the domain, I have to enter a domain user’s username like this:  DOMAIN\USERNAME. 

Maybe something similar has to be done with the SMP username?

Also, one other thing caught me out:  I gave EVERYONE RW share permissions, but the individual shared folders didn’t give EVERYONE any access rights at all.   I think I had to give EVERYONE read permissions on the folders that were shared.  But it’s been a while since I set all that up.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t add any usernames to my share computer.  I left the folders shared RW to EVERYONE and left the default username and password on the SMP.

it seems ot be working now for some reason. I’ll list it herei n case anyone does a search - I will also list the places that I got the information as I kindo f meshed it all from a bunch of sources.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1581431 - This one gave me a big head start and this one as well added in some of the final items. http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Networking/Troubleshooting-Windows-File-Sharing/td-p/92642

What this will cover is the following -

  1. Server setup for the File server. In this case Windows 2008 r2 with Hyper-V but the steps hsould be able ot be replicated to any server type.

  2. Domain Configuration - In this case a single domain named Homedomain.local but can be any domain structure.

  3. WDTV Live configuration.

These links are not all inclusive to what i had to do so I broke this down into two sections -

Server Setup (in my case Windows 2008 r2 with Hyper-v with 8TB of space across 4 drives)-

This was on my 2008 server. I have it running as both the file server and the domain controller as it has such massive drives it has no problems- (note if your using another machine to be the file server and you have another server as your domain controller then you perform these steps ON the file share server.

  • Enable ‘Netbios over TCP/IP’ this is done by going into the network properties of your server and changing it form Automatic to Enabled (you would think Automatic would be sufficient but I guess Enabled is a forced for it)
    Both of the below are the services that were disabled. I had to set them to automatic and then I had to start them

  • Enable service ‘Computer Browser’

  • Enable service ‘SSDP Discovery’

This turned on the  …__MSBROWSE__.  that is the netbios communications that needed ot be there for it to work.

THis then made me hit my next snafu. I had to add a registry key - [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters]
“IsDomainMaster”=“True”

This did not automatically show up and this was causing the files I was serving off the 2008 server to not be showing even though the msbrowse folder was there.

Now I have it so I was able to get to my device and I could see the windows file share server in the list and I could not yet see the directories.

What I had to do at this point was set the file share directory that i have the media in to be Everyone Full Contronl for the share and Everyone Full Control for the file persmissions. (Important) When you set this ensure that INHERITANCE is turned on for the permissions to go down any folder made in this Share.

Domain Controller User Account Setup -

The only thing I had to do on the domain controller is ensure that i had a short username ID and password that was not using any special characters. If you are not sure how to do this learnd to use ADUC to make an account and just don’t go all gungho on complex password schemes. In my case it was a 7 digit useid with no dashes or spaces and a password with capitals and numbers but no special sharaters in it.

WDTV Live setup -

In here I had to do the most tinkering to get itj ust right.

A) My Router does DHCP for “guest” machines that are noto n the domain they do not use the internal DNS of my Domain. If you have a setup where you have DHCP giving EXTERNAL DNS you will want to ensure ot hardcode the IP configuration network wise and use your INTERNAL DNS source as the point the WDTV Live is pointed to.

Go to Setup>Network Configuration> Hardcode all based on your network. If you DO NOT want to hardcode ensure your DHCP is giving intenrla DNS.

Next I had to setup the login THis is also under  Setup>Network Configuration but then you have to scroll down a few bars to see where it says WORKGROUP change it from WORKGROUP to YOUR DOMAIN. In my case HOMEDOMAIN.local You do not need the .local in there you just need the domain name of the domain where the IDs you created on the Domain Controller are located at.

At this pint you should be able to go to Files>Windows Shares and see the server and then be able to then select the share you had granted the Everyone control to and at this point it hsould prompt you to login.

In this case JUST use your name and your password you setup on the Domain Controller. Do not add any Domain\name or name#domain.local. In my case it was ismply the seven character user account and then the password. Tick the remember me checkbox and you should be set. If it ever forgets you you need to remember 1 thing. The domain controller has to be UP and ready with its services BEFORE you turn on your WDTV Live machine. If it is not then you may have to Clear the user information under Setup>Network Configuration on the WDTV Live device. and reenter it AFTER the DC is back online to get it all syncronized right up.

End of Writeup but one final note -

I also did one other things I Added specific directories into my Video library. When you do that a great thing to do is to change it to update the media library every 1 hour rather than every time on standby. I was using the device and wondering why the library never updated and it was because i had my hands on it the entire time. Also I noticed if i have say 3 units like I do that you have to wait until they are ALL hibrnating to have it update which would never happen in our house and all the movies we watch.

I now have one outstanding issue which is a 0kb metathumb issue that is really ticking e off it has happened on about 1/4th of my 200 movies and only on the 1/4th of movies it will happen every time. I even tried to use things like the WDTVHubGen.exe program to update it VIA the pC rather than the WDTV Live but this isn’t wokring either.