Shared folders not showing up on network devices

Well, I appreciate your idea, but I don't know how that would diagnose the problem, because other folders that are inside the SAME folder on the SAME external drive are fine. If the problem was with the drive or computer, NONE of my folders/files on any of the drives would share, but they do share without any problem. Just some folders show up, and some do not. And I am talking about folders that are all in the same folder with each other. The top folder is called "X-S1" and there are several sub-folders inside it. Some of these sub-folders show up on the network (TV, tablets, phones, etc.) and some others do not. But when I shared them, the windows dialog box (the one with the green progress bar while sharing) displays ALL of the names of the sub-folders and all the individual photo files in each of those. Then when it's done, it show they are all shared. That's why this is so confusing.

well, if the issue continue on the laptop then HDD is at some fault. If not the PC is. I wonder if MFT of that drive is bugged? I guess the most experienced person regarding this is Jumanji.

Is reformatting the drive an option?

Try Disk Check

GokAy said:

If it is indeed like that great.

You can change filesystem without formatting
Run cmd: - change H: to your external drive letter: convert H: /FS:NTFS

Still you should backup just in case.

Ahh! Forgot about that, good looking out, GoKAy. Didn't help but I should have remembered that.

Well the only accounts of missing folders/files in shared folders involve offline shares and the like, usually business settings. Very interesting case this is.

GokAy said:

Well the only accounts of missing folders/files in shared folders involve offline shares and the like, usually business settings. Very interesting case this is.

Interesting, yes. Vexing, quite. I thought for sure he had a security policy issue due to the external filesystem as I have had this before. But the OP says no. Before we even get into his TV and different OS, I wanted to know if the Windows network was alright and he says no, he cannot access these folders from his Windows laptop, either. I use a Windows laptop to troubleshoot share issues sometimes. Windows 7 treats other Windows 7 computers alright. Although I have run into credential issues where I had to login every time, even though I had password free sharing enabled. Getting into the credential manager allowed me to correct this. They stored credentials was not correct. But this does not help the OP, Bill.

I know one thing, once you go over everything and start to "narrow in", you can often "not see the forest for the trees". Then I back off and take a broader view of the issue or else I burn a LOT of hours and get very frustrated. At this point, I would beg or borrow any other external drive, even try a flash drive and setup shares on it, just to see if it is this particular drive or his PC causing this issue. I think Bill did say he put the external drive on his laptop and got the same thing from it. Why? I don't know. Firmware maybe? That is why I would try another drive, just temporarily, to check it out. A nice fat external USB drive and even a flash drive too, just to see. Whatever this issue is, I would say it is firmly connected to this particular external hard drive until we can prove otherwise. This is just my opinion, your opinion on it would certainly be appreciated.

Not sure how this would make any difference because some of the sub-folders in the same main folder are fine and they show up on all my network devices. It's only some of the sub-folders that don't show up, and I don't find any difference in the share properties, and besides they were all shared together at the same time. (I selected all of them and then shared and the dialog box with the green progress bar displayed each sub-folder and also every photo file within each of those, so......I don't understand this).

I already told my reasoning.

GokAy said:

well, if the issue continue on the laptop then HDD is at some fault. If not the PC is. I wonder if MFT of that drive is bugged? I guess the most experienced person regarding this is Jumanji.

Is reformatting the drive an option?

Try Disk Check

I don't see how that would help, since some of the sub-folders within the main folder show up on TV, laptop, phones and tablets. But other sub-folders within the SAME MAIN FOLDER do not show up. If NONE of the sub-folders showed up, then I would possibly suspect the external drive as a problem, but that's not what's happening here.

GokAy said:

Ok, sorry if I missed it above, what about security options? Can you check the working folder and a non-working one? Select folder - right click - properties - security - see if users/groups are same in both. Also check Advanced settings down below.

Try adding Everyone to root of external drive (L) and add Everyone - full control.

That fixed me up great! Thanks. I have a WD TV device and I added a second hard drive to my main PC that shares all its photos, music, videos , etc.
Well, the video files were too much so I added the second internal HD to the computer. The WD Player and my other two wired network computers accessed everything just fine. Then one day they couldn't.
I added EVERYONE to the security for the second HD as you explained and now it's back to full access from every machine in the house.
I don't know why it worked to begin with (for months) and then decided to start blocking access. But now all is good again,
Thanks
ZDOG628, Up the Irons!