After doing the Demver procedure it would not work for me until I did a major reboot of the WD by holding the power button in for longer than 5 seconds. Then the share folders came up and all was well.
Lucky, do the share folders persist after several days and restarts of either the PC or the WDTV? I found that with Windows 7 I could not count on the folder (or the PC for that matter) reliably showing up, so I switched to an external HDD. Under XP it ALWAYS shows up.
It should be noted that a DLNA media server will reliably show up in the WDTV, even if that server is running on Windows 7, 8, or 10. It is a good workaround for those who want an easy way to access folders or files. However, my personal desire is to view extended data for my movie collection and for that the attached HDD works better.
Horizons 1 No it is not reliable. Sometimes it works and sometimes the windows share will find nothing or just 1 or 2 of the machines in the network or it will spin forever. An external HDD plugged into the WDTV is fairly reliable although the bigger the drive the longer the buffering takes. I am looking for another wireless media streamer. Any recommendations? It is a shame I have three of these WDTVs in the house and they are all the same. I bought them when W7 was fresh and they all worked. With all of the window updates and the FW updates on the WDs themselves it has become a hassle to keep them in the windows network and I don’t like the media server function because you can’t see an external HDD plugged into one of the computers. I am only happy when the windows share is working.
Hi all here’s what I found not sure if someone else has posted this fix yet. Okay I turned off the password protected sharing under all networks and I still couldn’t see my pc so just for kicks I checked the workgroup name in the WDTV and it was correct and then I checked it in Windows 10 and low and behold it was set to workgroup not my workgroup name. I changed it to what it was supposed to be and finally I could see my pc in WDTV. I guess when Win 10 did the last update it changed the workgroup name. Hope this helps someone.
i was pulling my heir out about until last night i made a discovery i went to explore and typed this in the address bar \WDTVLive hit enter and bingo i see the that i connected drive to the player i don’t bother with shares as long as i copy to the drives connected to the player i’m happy 
Ok The reason nobody can see the Win 10 PC listed in the file browser of the WD Live TV unit is because it uses directory access instead of using the traditional file share systems we got used to with the older OS systems. When WD TV unit asks for ur password this is a requirement of the win 10 system even if u have gone and reset the network permissions with windows. once a location (PC) is authorised it does not have to be done again. I have a 4TB drive hooked up to my laptop thru USB and added the video directory to the Media library of Windows media and not the windows media guide gallery thingy. using windows media player and adding the folder of vids or msic to the library enables the drive or folder to be shared with the device. it is done thru windows media sharing as well as the homegroup sharing system although they are both independant of eachother. so to see ur directories for ur win 10 pc
open network and sharing center
find media sharing
allow the device u want to see or play files on
open windows media player
click view or find the library options to add the folders u want to use for viewing or listening to media
grab remote for ur device if not powered up do so
goto settings
goto file locations
click on media shares (windows)
let it build the library
start enjoying the media
if it askes for a password it will be either ur microsoft password or local account password depending on how ur user account is set up on ur pc ur using. if u have pin setup disreguard that u have a pin and enter ur actual password
about the file types playable if using windows media streming install a codec pack such as k-lite the newest free version to allow windows media to recognise most formats such as .mp3, .mpg all types, MKV, RP, OGG, K-Lite is packed with almost every codec avail incliding DiVX and XVID H264,3
I turned off the Media Library in the WDTV so I don’t have what you call “buffer”. Here is my setup: I share music and photos via a media server (tversity) and I browse my movie collection from a USB HDD attached to the WDTV. The Media Library function isn’t needed unless you want to sort by genre, category, artist, etc. I can do this for music already with Tversity and don’t need it for movies since my movies are in folders by genre. Hence, I turned off the Media Library and am a happy camper. YMMV, but some parts of this might be helpful.
Yeah, but when you use Windows Media to share aren’t you effectively using a server rather than browsing the directory? There are reasons why this may not be desirable. For instance, I use the XML metadata to view movie descriptions and movie poster thumbs. Can you do this when sharing the content via Windows Media? I haven’t tried but I think not.
Is this one long thread covering many different topics about streaming with WDTV Live? Why not seperate posts?
Anyway, my question: At some stage in my desperate attempt to get the unit working (wirelessly) from my Win 10 PC (after many years succesfully on my previous XP PC) I came to a request for Username and password. I hadn’t a clue what these referred to but concluded it must mean my PC user name and password.
Q1: Was I right please?
Anyway I then tried to enter Terry followed by my surname, leading to
Q2: Where is the SPACE character?
–
Terry, East Grinstead, UK
Hi Terry,
Yes, you are seeing the Windows logon request. I suggest trying “Anonymous” and no password, although it depends upon your config of course. If you haven’t disabled the Windows guest account that may work. I have no idea where the space symbol is.
Just a general comment on wireless vs wired - I have found wireless to be flakey, dropping the connection to my media server PC often. What I did instead in my new house where a cable run is impractical was to use a Wireless Gaming Hub (bridge). The bridge maintains a reliable wireless connection and the WDTV thinks it’s connected via wired. Now I never drop connectivity. I had the bridge gathering dust in my closet so there wasn’t a new expense for me so I understand if people with this issue don’t see this as a great option.
For anyone who is not able to see their Network Shares in the WDTV, this is the solution that worked for me. Sine the update in the summer of 2017, to the Creators version, there are endless complaints and attempts at solving this issue, not just for WDTV but also, all SMB (1) requests. The few who have suggested that this is a Master Browser issue, have been correct. I have an ASUS RT-AC56U router. I use the stock firmware. There is a setting in there which activated the router’s ability to be a Master Browser. I don’t recollect what the setting was, it did not say Master Browser, but it did say something relevant. I imagine any reasonable new router you have has a decent chance to also have a similar option. The only issue this ever has is if it loses its status. For me this has only happened once in many months. Today was the second time, and so I searched for a command to stop the Window’s 10 PC that was Master Browser. I opened a DOS window with Admin Privilege and and simply typed the command “Net Stop Browser”. I rebooted my WDTV and all my network shares were once again displaying and working. There was a batch file that someone wrote, which they set to run every 15 minutes, with the commands to stop and start the browser. I no longer know where I saw that, sorry. NOTE: your router might require that you activate its Media Player option and plug in a USB drive, I used a Thumb drive in mine.
Hi, I have the same issue. Are you referring to the DHCP server?
Hey Everyone,
I have not managed to get the WD TV Live working reliably with Windows Shares directly, however I have found that you can use the “Media Server” option, if you enable the media sharing in Windows 10, to do this follow these steps:
- Search for “Media Streaming Options” using start menu search
- Turn it on and ensure that WDTVLive is set to allowed
- Open Windows Media Player
- Select Videos on Left hand side
- Click “Organise” at top Left then “Media Libraries” then videos, add any folders you want to share.
When using WD TV Live, ensure it is connected to the same network, Wireless or Wired and then choose Videos, then select the source as “Media Server” and your machine should show up, once in there select “Folders” and the folders you have shared should show up.
Its important to note that this is using DLNA to play the files over the network rather than SMB directly, so performance and bandwidth may be limited as the DLNA protocol is no where near as efficient as SMB on its own, but at least this allows us to stream video once again from our Windows 10 PCs to our WD TV Lives.
Alternatively you could always install something like PS3 Media Server on your computer and then use that.
Thanks.
