HD100 will not “Browse Media Files”, Help!

[tke743]

Just got 2 HD100’s and they work great, except that no matter what I do I can not get to me media files under media center. TV, recordings etc work fine, even Music under media center works, but when I click on “Browse Media Files” nothing happens. Please help

[tke743]

Forgot to mention. Server can see the network folders in question, they are mapped as network drives. The folders come up on the server and are playable. The folders are mapped as media folders in the server and extender.

[Taddeusz]

Are your library locations set as UNC paths in SageTV (i.e. \\server\share)? If not you'll probably need to do that.

[tke743]

That was it. Thanks

[waynedunham]

I cannot play media files that reside in shared folders on a different machine than my server through my HD-100 extenders. I'm running WHS on the server machine and SageTVService is running as SYSTEM since the service is run before any logon. The machine where I want to play the files from is running XP.
If I fire up SageTV (yes, its set up for those directories to use UNC paths in SageTv), or just browse the files in Windows Explorer from the WHS machine I can play the files, but naturally since I'm at the desktop now on the WHS machine those instances are run as the logged in user.

So my guess is I've got to somehow get SageTvService to run as a user? How would I go about that since my only access to SageTvService is through the WHS Console and there's no place to tell it which user to run the service through like the stand alone SageTvService control panel I used to use on XP.

[gplasky]

Right-click on My Computer and choose Manage. Now open Services and Applications and go to Service on the left side of the window. Scroll down the right hand side window until you see SageTV. Double-click on it. Go to the Log On tab and click This account. Now supply the User ID and password (it needs to have a password) Use the browse button-it's easier and it qualifies the user ID. Click the Apply button and then go back to the General tab and click the Start button.

Gerry

[waynedunham]

Thanks Gerr, I'll give that a try as soon as there's a long enough gap in recordings. I've also got to rescan my HDHR's. Comcast has added/deleted/moved clear QAM channels for the 3rd time in 2 weeks. <sigh>

[waynedunham]

Thanks Gplasky, that did the trick. I can now play files off the networked machine's shared folders.

[gplasky]

Gerry

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Gerry

I spoke too soon. It really messed up other things. For instance the firewire STB channel changer no longer worked. Running SageTV local (easier for doing channel maps, etc) wouldn't work, no epg, no tuners, no recordings, etc.

Luckily, I don't think I had too much recording on the HD-PVR so no channel changing for almost a day probably didn't generate a huge loss. <sigh>

So its back to running as local.

So why is Windows HOME Server such a huge PITA to get to JUST WORK for local (i.e. in my wired home) stuff? I can see being extra picky about outside access or if you have kids or something.

[gplasky]

As long as the service doesn't have to interact with the desktop (like the old netflix plugin) it should be able to run as a user ID. Make sure the ID you use is in the local Administrators group and has a password. If the issue is it HAS to interact with the desktop and you have that checked when running as local service it becomes either/or. That's why you may want to consider adding more storage to WHS instead of accessing another machine/NAS on the network. That's one of the reasons I went to WHS. One box running for recording and media storage. I still have some 500GB drives I will swap out for 1.5 or 2 TB drives when I get low on storage.

Gerry

Gerry

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by gplasky

As long as the service doesn't have to interact with the desktop (like the old netflix plugin) it should be able to run as a user ID. Make sure the ID you use is in the local Administrators group and has a password. If the issue is it HAS to interact with the desktop and you have that checked when running as local service it becomes either/or. That's why you may want to consider adding more storage to WHS instead of accessing another machine/NAS on the network. That's one of the reasons I went to WHS. One box running for recording and media storage. I still have some 500GB drives I will swap out for 1.5 or 2 TB drives when I get low on storage.

Gerry

Gerry

I'm not sure what it is, and I could get around some of the issues but when I found out that by running under a user instead of local system that it wouldn't do the firewire channel changing that was definitely a deal breaker.
For now I'll have to manually move the files over the the new Sage Server from the old Sage Server (the other machine I was trying to access) when I need them.
I've still got my old PVR-500's in the old machine. I didn't really want to
put them into the new machine since they have so few channels they can get now (about a dozen, with many of those local access/cspan, etc), but when my lousy signal from my Comcast cable causes the HDHR's and HD-PVR to mangle a recording then I can get some of them back from the recordings on the old analog channels.
It does seem odd that I can get a directory, see the files but cannot play them. It sure would be nice to know whether its WHS, or XP on the old machine that is refusing to play nice.

[zoundz]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I'm not sure what it is, and I could get around some of the issues but when I found out that by running under a user instead of local system that it wouldn't do the firewire channel changing that was definitely a deal breaker.

There is an anomaly wrt services interacting with the desktop. Apparently if services need to interact with each other, they either BOTH must be set to interact with the desktop or NEITHER can be set to interact with the desktop. When you change a service to run as a user, it can't be set to interact with the desktop. If the firewire channel change is running as a normal program or if it is a service set to interact with the desktop, the two will be incompatible. If it is running as a normal program, you might need to set it up with srvany.exe or gensvc.exe to run as a service as well.