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Win HOW-TO share folders over SMB using Windows 7
#1
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Introduction

As has been documented elsewhere, XBMC's scrapers and library work best when full access to video and audio files is provided to them via an SMB share. However, MS is making it more and more difficult to share using SMB in Windows. You have to turn off Homegroup and do all sorts of other messy things. The following is a guide to quickly and easily turn SMB sharing on in Windows 7.

Preparation

As a initial step, you should be connected to your network. I, personally, am connected using a LAN cable and have been provided an IP address by my router using DHCP. If you prefer to use Static IP, there should be no real problem. If you can see the internet, you should be connected enough to the router for our purposes. Also, when you are first connecting your Windows 7 computer to your network, it will ask if you are connecting to Home, Work, or a Public network. This guide presumes that you selected Home. The same steps SHOULD work if you selected Work. They will almost certainly not work if you selected Public. Also, sometimes you will be asked to be certain if you want to do something or you will be asked to go up a level in clearance to do something. This guide presumes that you agree to all of that.

The Process

Step one: Click the "Network Internet Access" icon at the bottom right of your screen, next to your clock, speaker icon, and possibly power icon. Click open the "Network and Sharing Center."

Step two: Locate and click "Choose homegroup and sharing options." You are now on the "Change Homegroup settings" window. In this window, click "Leave the homegroup..." A warning will pop up. Go ahead and click "Leave the homegroup."

Step three: You are now presented with a page labeled "Share with other home computers running Windows 7." From here click the link "Change advanced sharing settings..."

Step four: You are now at the "Change sharing options for different network profiles" page. This is where you are going to do the nitty gritty. I'm going to go option by option. Most of these will probably already be configured correctly, but I'll tell you how they should be configured, nonetheless.

Network Discovery: turn on network discovery

File and printer sharing: turn on

Public folder sharing: Your choice. It can be on or off.

Media Streaming: By default, this is off. You can turn it on if you want, but it is not why we are here, so I'm going to leave it off for now.

Password protected sharing: Turn off password protected sharing

HomeGroup connections: This doesn't really matter, since you already left homegroup. However, I allowed Windows to manage my homegroup connections. It seemed easier than arguing.

Step five: Click Save changes. Now close the window that says "Share with other home computers running Windows 7."

Step six: Navigate to a folder you want to share. I am navigating to D:\Movies. First, left click on D:\Movies (or whatever your folder is named) to make sure it is highlighted. Then, right click on the folder. Put your mouse over "Share with" and four options should pop up "Nobody, Homegroup (read), Homegroup (read/write), Specific people." Click "Specific people..."

Step seven: You should now be on a dialog that is entitled "Choose people to share with." Your goal is to share the folder with "Everyone." On the dialog there should be a list of people. This list might include "Administrator," your username, "Guest," and "Everyone." It might only contain a subset of that group. If "everyone" is listed, simply click everyone, then click "Share." Voila, done. If you want to decide whether to keep Everyone as a Reader or change them to a Reader/Writer (or vice versa), read Step eight.

If Everyone is not listed, click the dropdown arrow next to the "Add" button. "Everyone" should be on the list there. Click it, then click Add. If "Everyone" isn't on the dropdown list, you may be able to type "Everyone" in and click Add. Feel free to comment if this is an issue and/or it doesn't work.

Step eight: Once "Everyone" has been added to the list, you have two choices. You can choose to keep "Everyone" as a Reader only, in which case XBMC would be able to read the files, but could not write anything into the folder, meaning it could not correct file names or export nfos and tbns into the folder, if you want that. Or you can choose to change Everyone to Read/Write, using the drop down arrow on the Everyone line. Then XBMC can export, but you have to deal with the danger that anyone on the network could change the files.

Once you've made your decision, click "Share."

Step nine: Repeat steps seven and eight for all folders you wish to share.

Conclusion

Now you can add your sources in XBMC without difficulty, but the guide to XBMC sources and scraping is in the Wiki and doesn't need to be repeated here.

Later Addition

If you are having any additional problems, definitely read through the rest of this thread. In particular, uninstalling Windows Live Sign In Assistant and Windows Live Essentials seems to be a useful thing to do.

Regarding cyber7's post

I have no idea what all that stuff is. My presumption is that some computers don't have those settings turned on by default. I have had no issue or need to deal with any of cyber7's instructions, but maybe they could be useful to others.
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#2
Wink 
On your WINDOWS 7 machine's services (Where your shares are):
Turn on
1. DNS Client,
2 Function Discovery Resource Publication,
3 SSDP Discovery, and
4 UPnP Device Host services.

Then go to ADVANCED NETWORK SHARING and enable everything for HOME/PUBLIC networks...

Cheers
cyber7 (aka Aubrey)
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#3
While I did not have trouble getting my SMB shares to work over windows 7, I am having the following problem:

Using the latest Camelot Beta 2:

I am attempting to have XMBC run on three different computes all pointing to the same database on a computer named "HTPC-Main." Therefore, even on the HTPC main machine, I want it to look for the file on SMB:/HTPC-Main/Media instead of the C:\Media folder that it actually sits in.

My problem is that when I add a file to the C:\Media folder, it appears twice. It appears once as SMB:/HTPC-Main/Media and once as C:\Media. If I remove the entry pointing to C:\Media, it just keeps coming back every time I restart XBMC.

Any thoughts/suggestions?
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#4
cyber7 Wrote:On your WINDOWS 7 machine's services (Where your shares are):
Turn on
1. DNS Client,
2 Function Discovery Resource Publication,
3 SSDP Discovery, and
4 UPnP Device Host services.

Then go to ADVANCED NETWORK SHARING and enable everything for HOME/PUBLIC networks...

Cheers
cyber7 (aka Aubrey)

Is this in Addition to the OP's instructions? What do you mean by shares? I tried the OP's instructions and got an error message..."Function not implemented".

I'm a new user to XBMC...and got myself the Revo R3610 - I'm sure that info doesn't help diagnose my problem...but, =). OH, I've also installed XBMC as a standalone on the Revo. Is there a link for instructions on how to use the HDD on the REvo to store some files? The Revo came with 320GB...what a waste if I can't use it. Thanks!
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#5
i did everything but i keep getting asked for username and password on the xbox
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#6
rossoneri711 Wrote:i did everything but i keep getting asked for username and password on the xbox

Well I also had issues get my xbox to connect with my PC(Win7), but I never had an issue with being prompted with username/password, however during my search to fix my problem I saw many people were able to get past the user/pass problem by uninstalling a program called "Windows Live Assignment", some program from a recent update that messed with the sharing...

However I didn't have the program on my pc and had to fix my issue entirely different, so if that doesn't work let me know and I'll post how I fixed my problem...
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#7
reds2433 Wrote:Well I also had issues get my xbox to connect with my PC(Win7), but I never had an issue with being prompted with username/password, however during my search to fix my problem I saw many people were able to get past the user/pass problem by uninstalling a program called "Windows Live Assignment", some program from a recent update that messed with the sharing...

However I didn't have the program on my pc and had to fix my issue entirely different, so if that doesn't work let me know and I'll post how I fixed my problem...

hello thanx for the reply. I cant seem to find a program called "Windows Live Assignment" on my PC. can you tell me the other solution you found?
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#8
I think he meant the Windows Live Sign In Assistant, a last resort option if nothing has worked so far is to try Network Magic (made by former MS network engineers) its intended for beginners but it might solve whatever permissions problem is plaguing you.

The software is commercial but there is a demo version at least.
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#9
rossoneri711 Wrote:hello thanx for the reply. I cant seem to find a program called "Windows Live Assignment" on my PC. can you tell me the other solution you found?

Yeah I meant Windows Live Sign In Assistent...

Well, like I said I never had the issue of being prompted for a user/pass with my windows settings(...my problem was that my smb sharing on my xbox through xbmc was not seeing anything when I looked(...or gave me an error), but I figured it out through some manual IP/Gateway/DNS settings on both PC and xbox...

But through my search to fix my problem I saw your problem was very popular and could provide some suggestions...

What folder did you share...directory?...Because for me I shared a folder on the desktop, but the share directory for me was NAME-PC\Users\Name\Desktop\Folder...and it said my folder was shared, but I noticed that the Users folder had a lock over it...so make sure there isn't a road block hidden some where, Win7 seems weird like that...

Another popular solution was to create a windows account named xbox password xbox given full permission sharing...and then use said user/pass when prompted...

The uninstall of the Windows Live Sign In Assistant was the most popular fix for your problem, some people I think even installed it then uninstalled it to fix their problem

EDIT: This was also the second most popular fix...
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=461741&postcount=2

This is the link to the entire thread about that solution
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=64522
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#10
reds2433 Wrote:Yeah I meant Windows Live Sign In Assistent...

Well, like I said I never had the issue of being prompted for a user/pass with my windows settings(...my problem was that my smb sharing on my xbox through xbmc was not seeing anything when I looked(...or gave me an error), but I figured it out through some manual IP/Gateway/DNS settings on both PC and xbox...

But through my search to fix my problem I saw your problem was very popular and could provide some suggestions...

What folder did you share...directory?...Because for me I shared a folder on the desktop, but the share directory for me was NAME-PC\Users\Name\Desktop\Folder...and it said my folder was shared, but I noticed that the Users folder had a lock over it...so make sure there isn't a road block hidden some where, Win7 seems weird like that...

Another popular solution was to create a windows account named xbox password xbox given full permission sharing...and then use said user/pass when prompted...

The uninstall of the Windows Live Sign In Assistant was the most popular fix for your problem, some people I think even installed it then uninstalled it to fix their problem

EDIT: This was also the second most popular fix...
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=461741&postcount=2

This is the link to the entire thread about that solution
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=64522

Dude .... thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!!

I uninstalled the Windows Live Sign In Assistant and it works perfectly!!!!

You are a life saver...i dont how many time i searched and tried ot make this work! You made my day! Thanks a million!
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#11
SiNJiN Wrote:Is this in Addition to the OP's instructions? What do you mean by shares? I tried the OP's instructions and got an error message..."Function not implemented".

I'm a new user to XBMC...and got myself the Revo R3610 - I'm sure that info doesn't help diagnose my problem...but, =). OH, I've also installed XBMC as a standalone on the Revo. Is there a link for instructions on how to use the HDD on the REvo to store some files? The Revo came with 320GB...what a waste if I can't use it. Thanks!

Same here, I am trying to access the new W7 PC from a PC with XBMC Live 9.11 running from a USB key. No success.

Followed the detailed instructions in post #1 (regarding #3, all was already turned on).

All machines are in the workgroup called HOME

On the XBMC Live PC: I can browse using:
Add Source/Browse/select Windows SMB and then I see HOME workgroup
When I click on the HOME workgroup, I see the name of the W7PC.
When I click on the W7PC, I get:
ERROR Function not implemented
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#12
Found my mistake:

Browse does not work the way one would expect
(the error says it: not implemented...)

In the Add Source screen you need to enter a full name (!) and then OK.

EXAMPLE
smb://W7PC/sharename
then OK

Hence, the instructions in post #1 are working fine, thanks so much.
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#13
I'm having a similar problem, except to top it all off, my "Add Source" window is non-responsive, so I can't add anything. I've tried updating XBMC, but still no joy. Sad
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#14
Has anyone managed to watch/listen to things on their xbox hd over a network to a win7 pc?
I can't get xbmc or wmp to play anything even though xbmc can see the files and wmp can see the folders but neither can get an further.
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#15
Perhaps you have a permission related issue..
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HOW-TO share folders over SMB using Windows 74