X360 Media Sharing Help

[AmpedSilence]

Here is situation.

I have two computers: DataStore and Wolverine. Before christmas, I decided to give the media sharing capabilites of the 360 a try (off of Wolverine). installed MP11 and shared my drive to the 360. In about 15 minutes, I was up and running, awesomely painless.

Over the break, I went to my parents and I built DataStore. Did the same thing. Once again worked in about 5 minutes. I could see both computers and everything was good (streaming and DiVX codec playing).

I took the computers apart and went back to my apartment. When i put everything back together, i could not see any of the shares. I was able to play around with DataStore and get that shared again but Wolverine is just not working. It was working prefectly before Christmas and during Christmas at my parents place. The switches, the router and, the cables are the same as before Christmas when everything worked prefectly.

Here are the things that i have tried:

1) Deleted the entire library, and "refreshed" it
2) Turned the share off and on multiple times.
3) Did a checkdisk, just to make sure there were no errors.

Also, just to see I tried Nero MediaHome and the 360 picked it up almost immediately. So I know that the 360 can see the computer. I would keep it like that but, Nero doesn't know that the 360 now can accept divx avi's and transcodes them to utter shite. The processer use is through the roof and the picture is just not clean as the native upscaler in the 360. So, I would like the MP11 sharing to work again.

Oh, on Wolverine the firewall is turned OFF.

Any help and further suggestions, would be greatly appriciated.

 

[tw1164]

Do a system restore back to when it was working.

 

[AmpedSilence]

Originally posted by: tw1164
Do a system restore back to when it was working.

i have system restore turned off on my computer.

 

[Modeps]

WMP11 would never work properly for me. It would start streaming something then crash... so I looked elsewhere. I'm using TVersity now and have zero issues.

 

[Xavier434]

When choose the source that the 360 is looking at to find media files do you even see Wolverine? You say it "is just not working" and the information you are providing is good but you need to define "just not working" in much greater detail.

A quick bit of advice would also be to remove as many components as possible with this scenario. Physically disconnect DataStore from network and run a wired connection from your router to the 360 if you are not doing that already. Turn off all safety features including any firewalls on your router. You could also try running a direct connection from Wolverine to the 360 without the use of a router but I have never tried that before so I don't really know what will happen.

 

[AmpedSilence]

Originally posted by: Xavier434
When choose the source that the 360 is looking at to find media files do you even see Wolverine? You say it "is just not working" and the information you are providing is good but you need to define "just not working" in much greater detail.

A quick bit of advice would also be to remove as many components as possible with this scenario. Physically disconnect DataStore from network and run a wired connection from your router to the 360 if you are not doing that already. Turn off all safety features including any firewalls on your router. You could also try running a direct connection from Wolverine to the 360 without the use of a router but I have never tried that before so I don't really know what will happen.

Everything is wired in my setup. Quick drawing....

DataStore Wolverine
| |
| |
| (10/100 Switch) |
---------------------
|
| <-- crossover cable
|
(Router) ---------------- X360


To answer your other question, before i could see Wolverine in the 'Select Source Screen', now i can't anymore, unless i have the Nero MediaHome server running, which i don't like the PQ of.

 

[Xavier434]

Based on your diagram, the next thing I would do is cut the fat and keep it simple. Connect only wolverine with the router and 360 or just connect wolverine with the 360 and see what happens. We need to isolate exactly which component or software is causing the problems. Since media home is working, I would think that it is probably software related but you want to have as little hardware in the mix when troubleshooting this software problem.

 

[Modeps]

You've got a crossover cable going from the switch to the router? Doesn't your Switch have an uplink port?

 

[AmpedSilence]

Originally posted by: Modeps
You've got a crossover cable going from the switch to the router? Doesn't your Switch have an uplink port?

no, it doesn't. It's a FAR 5 port switch i bought a few years ago. It gives me great throughput when i am ftping from my computer to the XBMC, almost 99% sustained. Except for not having the uplink port, it's a pretty fantastic switch. Much better than the gigabit Netgear i have.

 

[oznerol]

I had a similar problem, although I was only sharing 1 PC. I moved it from 1 router to another and it just disappeared.

My fix? I'm not entirely sure why it worked, but I renamed my PC and it showed up again with no issues since.

Edit: Perhaps Weapon X would be a good name alternative?

 

[AmpedSilence]

Originally posted by: ducci
I had a similar problem, although I was only sharing 1 PC. I moved it from 1 router to another and it just disappeared.

My fix? I'm not entirely sure why it worked, but I renamed my PC and it showed up again with no issues since.

Edit: Perhaps Weapon X would be a good name alternative?

THANK YOU! completely forgot that Wolverine was once known as Weapon X. I had moved the computer from the yellow case to a total black one didn't have name for it! ( I like X-men names for my computer!)

watch, that will probably fix the problem also!

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: AmpedSilence

Originally posted by: ducci
I had a similar problem, although I was only sharing 1 PC. I moved it from 1 router to another and it just disappeared.

My fix? I'm not entirely sure why it worked, but I renamed my PC and it showed up again with no issues since.

Edit: Perhaps Weapon X would be a good name alternative?

THANK YOU! completely forgot that Wolverine was once known as Weapon X. I had moved the computer from the yellow case to a total black one didn't have name for it! ( I like X-men names for my computer!)

watch, that will probably fix the problem also!

LOL

 

[AmpedSilence]

Okay, so last night i tried some suggestions...

Here is what i have done....

1) Changed name, like ducci suggested..... didn't work
2) changed the port on the switch
3) changed the cable
4) turned off DataStore
5) uninstalled MP11 and reinstalled

At this point, i am at a complete loss. Any other suggestions?

 

[Thraxen]

Not sure. The only thing that ever caused issues for me was Windows Firewall... but you already mentioned that you had that disabled. Are you sure that the 360 is still an allowed device in WMP11?

Have you considered taking Moped's advice using TVersity? I used WMP11 for a while, but I couldn't get it to stream MP4 files to my PS3. There were some workarounds for that that involved making registry changes, but I never got it to work. So I tried out TVersity and now I can stream to both my 360 and PS3 with no issues at all.

 

[Xavier434]

AS, are the two computers able to see and talk to each other or is Wolverine invisible to everything on the network? Is Wolverine able to see the 360 even though the 360 cannot see Wolverine? Is it only the shares that the 360 cannot see or is it the computer itself?

Also, I would reset all of the network settings on the 360 back to default and try that again. While you are at it, put as many related features on Wolverine back to default as well and then set it all back up.

Worst case scenario, you could always default to transferring your stuff from Wolverine to Datastore and format the drive in order to eliminate the possibility of bad software, bad settings, and corrupt files on Wolverine being a variable.

 

[AmpedSilence]

Originally posted by: Xavier434
AS, are the two computers able to see and talk to each other or is Wolverine invisible to everything on the network? Is Wolverine able to see the 360 even though the 360 cannot see Wolverine? Is it only the shares that the 360 cannot see or is it the computer itself?

Also, I would reset all of the network settings on the 360 back to default and try that again. While you are at it, put as many related features on Wolverine back to default as well and then set it all back up.

Worst case scenario, you could always default to transferring your stuff from Wolverine to Datastore and format the drive in order to eliminate the possibility of bad software, bad settings, and corrupt files on Wolverine being a variable.

DataStore and Wolverine can see each other, in fact, I don't even have a keyboard or mouse plugged into DataStore i just Remote Desktop into it when ever i want to put something on it. or change something in the settings.

Thats the strange thing. I know that the 360 can see wolverine, because as soon as i turn on Nero Media Home, it shows up on the 360. Also, when i reinstalled MP11, the 360 came up as a "new" device. so, I know that wolverine can see the 360 also. So i guess it's just that the shares can't be seen. I guess i am going to try TVersity tonight. As long as it's flexible enough like MP is with folder structure and it will stream the xvid/divx files rather than transcode them like MediaHome, i will just leave it at that.

Tried that last night, even turned the firewall ON to see if that would fix the problem. But no, that didn't do it.

The reformat idea might not be a bad thing to do. It's been almost 4 years since i reformated and installed from scratch. This install of Windows has seen three MB/CPU combos, everything from a AthlonXP 1900+ to the current X2 3600+, I've gotten lazy. And several video cards also. It might be time to just format and start again. Probably would take less time, and work better anyway.

 

[Xavier434]

Two more things:

1. TVersity is a transcoding piece of software just like Nero and Transcode360. However, it is the most popular out of the 3.

2. I am wondering if the reason why this is a problem is due to the index that is created when you dump the media files into the library on WMP11. Doing what you have done should reset the Index enough to the point where these issues should not occur. However, there is always the chance of things not working as intended. Also, just because you reinstalled WMP11 does not mean you deleted and reinstalled the entire Index. I know it sounds silly, but have you tried uninstalling WMP11, creating a new directory to store all of your media files, moving the media files to that new directory, reinstalling WMP11, and choosing only that directory to share? If you haven't then try it.

 

[oznerol]

Sorry my idea did not help.

TVersity is good - and it will not transcode media files it knows your 360 can handle normally - however the file structure for it is annoying. I'm not sure if I'm just an idiot, but for whatever reason, even if I set the application to have a custom file listing hierarchy, when I view it from my 360 it shows the default TVersity listing. Changing settings, reinstalling, rebuilding the database, etc, has not changed this.

I am almost positive there is a simple solution to your problem. Changing the PC name worked for me, but I will continue to think about other ideas.

 

[AmpedSilence]

I ended up installing TVeristy. 360 picked it instantly and everything works. The sharing on MP11 i guess was just messed up.

Just don't like the default directory structure. I would prefer just to see the folders i have shared right away rather than having to go through an extra TVersity layer. I have my files the way i like them, I don't need them seperated by genre, year, and artist; hell, most of them don't have that imbedded in the file itself.

I like the fact that it automatically refreshes the library at my preset intervals and i like that i can watch podcasts of shows on G4 on the TV.

TVersity from gets a 4.5/5, only because of the folder issue (requiring an extra 5 seconds to get to the folders I need).

Thanks for everyone's help!!

 

[gorcorps]

Mine was working great till yesterday... when my firewall started blocking wmp for some reason. Unblocked and all things are good again.