Vista Media Center and Videos on Network Drives

05 Feb

Posted by: Shane in: Technology

Well I succumbed and picked up Microsoft Vista Home Premium for my Media Center PC.It’s actually running extremely well and is more stable than XP Media Center 2005. It does have it’s little quirks, and one of them is getting my home movies that are stored on a network drive to show up under Vista Media Center’s Videos in a nice way** . This also more seriously effects Xbox 360’s running as an extender as Vista Home Premium no longer lets you set the extender up with a login script for it to see the network drives.

What to do:
1. Make some shortcuts (right click, create shortcut) of the folders on your network share containing your Videos - this is important - DON’T make shortcuts of mapped drives in Vista - make them of the folders on the Network Shares (ie under Start/Network) otherwise they won’t work.

2. Place the shortcuts of these folders into the “C:\Users\Public\Public Videos” folder, then reboot.

Each shortcut properties (right-click, properties, shortcut tab) should look something like this (the inverted commas are needed only if your folder contains words with spaces like my example below):

Target: "//server-name/share-name/folder"
Mine says: Target: "//GIGLANDISK/video_files/Kids Films"

The result?

Without Adding Folders (I have no watched folders according to Media Center or the Xbox), these have now shown up on my Media Center PC and my Xbox 360 just how I want them to. It seems anything in the Public Videos folder shows up, whether you want them to or not.

It works for me, and I hope it works for you too.

** This could be another computer too - this applies if the movie you want isn’t physically on the computer you want to play it.

Extra Steps:
1. To get rid of the Sample Videos that show up in Media Center’s “Library”, delete them (and the \Sample Videos folder they are in) from the Vista machine for them to disappear in Media Center (they reside in C:\Users\Public\Public Videos).

2. If you are having a problem getting rid of folders you don’t want in the Library of Media Center, the best way to clean it out so far I have found is to delete all of the files in the “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player” folder, replacing [username] with the account showing the extra folders (Xbox 360’s and extenders come up as MCX1, MCX2 etc.) and then reboot. This only removes the Library Database - not the files so this is safe to do.

Regards,
Shane.

25 Responses to “Vista Media Center and Videos on Network Drives”

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25.
Satmario Says:
January 24th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Thanks for guide, but when I copy the shortcut to the C:\Users\Public\Public Videos and I start VMC, I see the same folder Icon two time
24.
Neil Says:
December 20th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I have set this up but have found a side effect, my Vista PC now wont go to sleep after playing a movie on a share. Also the computer the file is on also wont go to sleep.

Anyone had this problem and know of a solution?
23.
David Says:
December 8th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Making the shortcut directly from the mapped drive worked for me in Vista Home Premium. So glad I found this post! I was going crazy trying to get my vista mce box to see my shared usb drive on my Airport Extreme. Media Center kept crashing when I tried to add the library (super annoying cause it looked like it was about to work but then it just brought the whole box down). Seriously hope other people find this post.
22.
Nelvin Says:
October 27th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
WORKING: Network shares now displayed on Vista Media Center Extender!!

For all of you guys who haven’t been able to get your vista network shares to show up on your vista MC and your Extender (i have spent so long trying to find a solution to this problem by trawling the net - with no joy…..) - i finally found a solution to the problem myself!!
This works with either the MKLINK symlink or PUBLIC shortcut “solutions” mentioned on this thread - with these additional steps on the REMOTE PC hosting the network shares:

Click Start, Run, then type secpol.msc
Edit this value - “Network access: Shares that can be accessed anonymously” and add your share names (e.g. SharedMovies)
Edit this value - “Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts” and select the “Guest Only - local users authenticate as Guest”

Restart your Vista Media Center - Your done!!

I hope this works for you guys!!

N.
21.
goelectric Says:
October 5th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
This works on Windows Media Center running on XP and XBOX 360 too for videos, music and pictures

What to do (repeat for music and pictures with My Music and My Pictures folders):
1. Make shortcuts (right click, create shortcut) of the folders on your network shares containing your Videos - this is important - DON’T make shortcuts of mapped drives - make them of the folders on the Network Shares otherwise they won’t work.

2. Place the shortcuts of these folders into the “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Videos” folder.

Each shortcut properties (right-click, properties, shortcut tab) should look something like this (the inverted commas are needed only if your folder contains words with spaces like my example below):

Target: “\\server-name\share-name\folder”
Mine says: Target: “\\192.168.1.4\shared files\My Videos”

The result?

Without Adding Folders (I have no watched folders according to Media Center or the Xbox), these have now shown up on my Media Center PC and my Xbox 360 just how I want them to. It seems anything in the Public Videos folder shows up, whether you want them to or not.

It works for me, and I hope it works for you too.