WD does not see 'Windows Shares' Win 7 Prof [ Edited ]

[riprazor]

Just got off the phone with WD support.  Tried the exact same things that everyone has suggested (and that I had already tried).  The network shares are still not visible on the WD box, despite being visible to every other machine on the network.  I have a case number and will talk to level 2 support on Monday.  Will post any relevant follow up.

[Steggl]

I am pretty sure the problem is very easy to solve. Is your workgroup actually named workgroup or does it have another name? You need to adjust the workgroup name in the WD TV SMP if it is not workgroup, otherwise you will not see your share.

[riprazor]

All of my machines and the WD are in the workgroup named WORKGROUP.  After searching for the last several hours, this is a well documented problem.  Numerous posts exist on the internet in different forums including this one.

[ubazan]

Hi! I'm writing from Argentina. It has to be a problem in the windows 7 machine. I have tried every options posted here and nothing, the WD TV Live SMP box can't see the Windows Shares. I have stoped trying, since I probed with a win7 laptop (via WiFi) and the WD TV box saw the Windows Shares with the basic settings for sharing. So, I gave up. If you get it done, please share the solution here, I'll be very thankfull.
PS: Sorry about my English.

[Steggl]

Okay, then I need to pass on this one. I thought that you actually entered the same pitfall as I did.

[JohnDeeEye]

Thanx for your helpful post. Yuh, I spent three days trying to spell WORKGROUP so now I've given up and just use my Speak and Spell to keep me amused. Such a simple solution. Thanks Steggler.

[Andy_D]

I didn't read through the 3 pages so sorry if I'm repeating myself.  I finally was able to get my shares to show up on my WD TV Life from my WHS by making two changes...

1) On the WHS, I turned on the Computer Brower service

2) I added the IsDomainMaster registry entry to my WHS using the information here...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc959923.aspx

Apparently my main desktop was the domainmaster and my wdtv would only see the shares from that desktop.  I had to change the master browser to finally get this to work

[riprazor]

A couple of things:

First  I believe the concept of "Computer Browser service" is from Windows 2000 and is replaced by enabling Network Discovery in the Network Sharing Center in Windows 7.  It can be turned on for both public and private, I have enabled both.

The key IsDomainMaster does not exist in Windows 7 and is effectively replaced by running all of the appropriate "publishing" services under the services tab of managing the machine.  Having said that, just for grins, I added the key and restarted the server.  I still get the spinning wheel of death.

My suspicion is that the code in the WD box was written prior to Windows 7 release and the security and features of sharing changed dramatically when the OS came out.  In some cases, if the stars all align, you may be able to succeed at getting it to work.  Forums around the internet indicate that many people, including those who have a high degree of technical expertise have not been successful, while others have been.  The fact that every other windows machine on my network can see the shares and WDtv cannot, leads me to believe the issue is on the WD side.

[TonyPh12345]

I have three windows 7 boxes on my network; one of which is a 64 bit laptop, and one runs on a 32 bit VirtualBox virtual machine. I've never had a problem connecting to any of them with one exception:  When microsoft started requiring SPNEGO token processing; and that affected ALL devices running Samba 3.5.1 or earlier.

The WD boxes use Samba 3.5.2 or later, which was released well after win 7... So, I think the stars line up more often than not... There's certainly no mojo or magic required...

I think, in a lot of cases, it's related to Firewall and Antivirus packages, etc, and a lot of people making tweaks to registries because Google told them so. 

Of course, sometimes tweaks to the registry do no harm, but often times tweaking something totally unrelated will affect network connections.

[Andy_D]

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riprazor wrote:

A couple of things:

First  I believe the concept of "Computer Browser service" is from Windows 2000 and is replaced by enabling Network Discovery in the Network Sharing Center in Windows 7.  It can be turned on for both public and private, I have enabled both.

The key IsDomainMaster does not exist in Windows 7 and is effectively replaced by running all of the appropriate "publishing" services under the services tab of managing the machine.  Having said that, just for grins, I added the key and restarted the server.  I still get the spinning wheel of death.

My suspicion is that the code in the WD box was written prior to Windows 7 release and the security and features of sharing changed dramatically when the OS came out.  In some cases, if the stars all align, you may be able to succeed at getting it to work.  Forums around the internet indicate that many people, including those who have a high degree of technical expertise have not been successful, while others have been.  The fact that every other windows machine on my network can see the shares and WDtv cannot, leads me to believe the issue is on the WD side.

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Can you humor me and run the script this guy created...

http://scottiestech.info/2009/02/14/how-to-determine-the-master-browser-in-a-windows-workgroup/

I have the same issues as you and the only time the shares don't show up is when my server is not listed as master.  I also changed the registry "MaintainServerList" to no on all other machines after the Master switched on me again