Cannot use "Play to >" with network files.

Hello everyone,

My network consists of three Windows 7 machines right now, two of which are functioning as Media Centers hooked up to TVs. The other is a laptop that is used as a regular PC.

One of the Media Center PCs functions as a server with all of the music and video files stores on multiple drives. The other computers have mapped drives to those shared folders on the server.

On the laptop, Windows Media Player adds all of the music from the server just fine, and it can play on the laptop, but when I try to use "Play to >" my media server (which is hooked up to my sound system) I get the following error:
"Failed to retrieve media information."

"Play to >" works perfectly with locally stored files.

Is this a known limitation? Are there any workarounds? It would be nice not to have to Remote Desktop to the server to play music (I like to play music without the TV on or using a remote ).

Thanks!
Brian

mikinho said:

It will not work using mapped drives but if you are using Home Groups then it will work using the UNC path.


So instead of going to the file using the mapped drive use

I tried using HomeGroups to do this and it still didn't work. Not only that, but the HomeGroup setup overwrote all the permissions on my other hard drives, so I had to retake ownership and assign permissions all over again.

have you tried this?

MKVs for Minimalists on Windows 7

mikinho said:

A UNC path uses double slashes or backslashes to precede the name of the computer followed by the share and remaining path.

i.e. \\whs01\music\

Or if you open Windows Explorer and goto the share via the Network instead of a mapped drive.

But this will only work when using HomeGroups, correct?

I tried using them again and it did the same thing: replaced all of the permissions on my shared drives, preventing access using the mapped drives feature and also disabling my remote desktop connections into the computer. I have the same ser accounts and passwords on both computers and so I selected the option to bypass HomeGroup permissions in the sharing settings and I had the same problem.

I've given up for now and went back to using iTunes and my iPhone as a remote which works great.

Brian

silentcid said:

have you tried this?

MKVs for Minimalists on Windows 7

Not to be rude, but what does this have to do with, um, anything?

kstrike155 said:

Not to be rude, but what does this have to do with, um, anything?

I would hope it was just a post to the wrong thread, but you never know

Ken

yeah did not want to say anything but wow!

I have yet to try a couple more things. I will post when my failures most likely. Since you can only share in wmp what is on the local hard drive and not on the server. I doubt you can 'play to' another computer with server files/off a network drive. I hope though, the reason i keep my media files all on one computer is so my laptop and my desktop can access them via the network. But maybe for just certain songs and cd's i will just put on my laptop and use the remote feature!