[phoenixdigital]

This has been plaguing me for a very long time now so I thought I would post my issue.

I have a windows XP machine which serves as my media share and it is a standard XP professional installation.

There are various shares some read only others read/write.

These generally work ok and XBMC can view and stream from these shares perfectly.

Now from time to time when you try and open some of these shares XBMC throws up a 'Lock Screen' and requests a username and password.

• I try the local username and password for the XP machine but that doesnt work.
  
• Then I try and empty username and password but that doesn't work.
  
• I turn off the share and turn it on again - doesn't work
  
• I created a new share and copied everything over to it - that doesn't work
  
• Performed a scandisk - that doesn't work
  
• Reboot XP machine - that doesn't work
  
• Reboot XBMC machine - that doesn't work
  

The other odd thing is that while one share works on the XP machine the other does not. So it's not a one share fails they all fail situation.

Right now as I am typing this there was my primary share which I did not have access to all of lastnight due to this bug. I tried it again today still not working. Then tried it again while typing this post it starts working again.

I have experienced this on XBMC running on original xboxes and also running on the Apple TV v2

An example of the error log from my ATV2

Code:

23:37:32 T:804175872 M:110321664   ERROR: SMBDirectory->GetDirectory: Unable to open directory : 'smb://192%2e168%2e0%2e210/C%2dVideos'
                                            unix_err:'d' error : 'Permission denied'

Note I can get to this same share from both Windows 7, Windows XP and Mac OS X machines and create and delete content from them. So it doesn't appear to be the XP media share.

Anyone have any thoughts on what else I can try?

[bluenote]

IMO setting up the same username and same password on all windows machines works well.

[phoenixdigital]

IMO setting up the same username and same password on all windows machines works well.

I tried this too but the shares still dont work from time to time. Infact the one that stopped working but then worked as I posted the original post has stopped working again.

[htpc guy]

Are you using shares or mapped network drives? For me shares work better. For some reason a mapped network drive will show up as a "Disconnected Network Drive" after some time of inactivity. Its a Windows bug I'm afraid. I work in IT and I have to deal with this all the time at work when people call in not being able to open a file.

Also there was a bug at one time that did this same thing when you had Windows Live software installed. I think that may be resolved though. I know it effected Win7 servers with Linux clients. Not sure if it effected XP or not.

[phoenixdigital]

They are just standard shares from a drive within the XP machine.

I dont have windows live installed. Its a bare XP install which is solely used as a media machine and video conversion. Noone ever logs into it for normal work.

I might try reinstalling it but I doubt it will make a difference.

[Hudson_Hawk04]

have you tired checking to make sure you are on a home network vs busniess..I put together a video in my sig, check and make sure your shares are still valid, in your case i think they are, and make sure the user "everyone" has the proper rights. Also try power cycling your router and modem. If all else fails try setting up shares using the ip address of the machine that the media is on. I have had the problem you are experiencing in the past and I know....it sucks big time.

[phoenixdigital]

have you tired checking to make sure you are on a home network vs busniess..I put together a video in my sig, check and make sure your shares are still valid, in your case i think they are, and make sure the user "everyone" has the proper rights. Also try power cycling your router and modem. If all else fails try setting up shares using the ip address of the machine that the media is on. I have had the problem you are experiencing in the past and I know....it sucks big time.

Yeah I was on a home network but I had changed the workgroup. Also have been using IP based connection in XBMC for a while due to thinking this may be the issue. Anyway I forced XP to use home network again and changed the workgroup again then rebooted.

Waited for things to start up and tried it again and I could get into the shares... XBMC on ATV2 then crashed playing a mp4 (known issue)..
When I restarted XBMC again I couldn't get into the shares again

I then tried powercylcing the modem/router as you suggested.

Waited for that to come up and things seem to be ok now. I will try again tonight but that might be the issue somehow??

Thanks for the tips. Never thought the router could be the issue.

[Hudson_Hawk04]

the power cycling the router and modem deal kida came to me as they are both in some ways connected to the proper function of the shares. One thing you could do seeing as how your running M$ stuff threaten to kick the shit out of it or canalize it for parts.

oh yeah, I have found it is best to use the windows simple file sharing also if you have anything related to windows live on your pc remove it.....it does nothing but muck things up.

[bluenote]

Are you checking your event log to see what specific errors are generated when & around the time this happens?

[phoenixdigital]

As a follow up it happened again. No surprises there.

I have turned on debug logging for XBMC to see if there was any more log information.

Here is a dump of the log.
http://pastebin.com/wXxt7XWJ

You can see some shares have no errors while others do not. There is nothing that makes these other shares stand out as some are read only and others are read/write for both working and non working.

I have simple file sharing active.

And there is nothing in the event log for XP

Will try the router restart and post back in a few mins. I am thinking of rebuilding this computer from scratch. Windows is an evil mistress.

Edit: Ok restarted router and it is working ok again?

Not that it really matters but I have a Billion 7402GL. Seems like I might need an upgrade. Will have to look at error logs for it next time it happens.

Edit Edit: Happened again and there are no errors in the router/modem log. Next step to test is have the ATV2 hardwired instead of using wireless. As then it will route straight through my noname Gigabit switch and not via the Billion modem/router.

[Hudson_Hawk04]

do you have anything related to windows live on your pc?

[phoenixdigital]

As far as I know I dont. As mentioned previously this machine is not used by anyone for day to day operations.

Its sole purpose is for video conversion and file sharing/streaming.

It also runs PyTiVo for sending media files to some TiVos in the house.

I cant see how any windows live components would have made it on there. There is no reference in program files add remove programs or add remove components.

I might reinstall it as well?

Edit: No difference made for direct ethernet connection which means that the router/modem was outta the path of data. Going to rebuild the XP machine tonight.

[phoenixdigital]

An update. I reinstalled XP from scratch and everything is working smoothly. All XP updates applied and all reshared drives are behaving.

It was about a 3-4 year old install of XP but as mentioned previously was relatively bareboned as it was primarily a media machine and video conversion server. It definitely didn't have Windows Live installed so that wasn't the issue.

It would have been nice to have narrowed down the issue but looks like I will have to just chalk it up to being a rusty crusty windows installation. Needed to be blown away and rebuilt from scratch.

I appreciate all that offered help.

[phoenixdigital]

Ok this issue has popped up again and I have finally worked out what the problem is.

Windows XP Pro allows a minimum of 10 connections to shares and when this maximum is reached you are given the lock/password window in XBMC.

This totally explains why it is so intermittent. I tested this out and as you can see from this screenshot I have reached the 10 connection limit. So any shares my XBMC is not connected to are inaccessible. Note IPC$ does not count towards the 10 limit.
http://tinypic.com/r/eq6umb/7

I attempted to close XBMC and then checked the connections and they were all closed when looking at the shares in computer management. When I restarted XBMC it re-established the connections it previously had maxxing it out again.

There are three solutions to this

a) The connections are closed properly when XBMC is finished with them
Where and who do I contact to get this resolved

b) I somehow increase the number of allowable connections.
I have searched around and there is all this talk about EULA breaches etc.... So I haven't been able to find anything that will work.

c) Telling me to install linux, Win 2003 etc...
Not helpful....

Is there anything else I can do to resolve this??

[phoenixdigital]

I had the idea of installing FreeNAS as a virtual machine on the XP box and then sharing the XP drives from that.

However even though VMWare and VirtualBox said that you can access the physical drives from the host OS it didn't work.

VMWare Player was restricted to 2 drives - plus didn't work so I didn't bother digging further

VirtualBox - I could not install the VirtualBox addons on FreeNAS as the base install did not have enough space to install ports in order for me to install. These addons are required in order to be able to mount host drives.

I think VirtualBox is the way to go I just need to work out how to install the addons without the need to update ports on FreeBSD.