My media players can't access a shared folder on the PC

dortmunder · 08 Jan 2018

Hi. I've just had to reinstall my Win10 and have run into a 'sharing' problem which I didn't have prior to the reinstall. Instead of a CD player in the lounge, I have a Cocktail Audio X10 which is a music player with an internal HDD containing my audio files. To get the files there, you have to access a shared folder on the PC. In the past, this has not been a problem but this time my PC seems to be blocking the share.

I've attached a pic of 'Network' (I've created a few shared folders during this saga) - this confirms all the shared folders, yes?

And there's a pic of the settings for the folder I intend to use (full control to Everyone and Guest).

As well as the X10 audio player, I have a Dune video player. Both of them will happily find WORKGROUP/Desktopetc but they cannot go any further than that – no shares can be accessed.

As far as I can tell from my attachments, everything is set up for sharing so can anyone suggest what's going wrong and how to fix it? My sincere thanks if so.

jimbo45 · 08 Jan 2018

Hi there

Are the devices you want to stream your music to Windows driven or SAMBA type (Linux / android etc).

If they are non windows you might want to ensure SMB1 is enabled (via control panel -- turn windows features on / off) as well as SMB3 (SMB direct I think it's called).

My media players can't access a shared folder on the PC-snapshot4.png

Ensure also any firewall or AV software (or both) allow remote connections to your computer --Local LAN counts as remote !! and I'd also ensure you don't use home groups --it's a dog and never really works.

In the upgrade you also might find that Network discovery has got itself turned off again.

As an aside and O.T I know but just a suggestion when you've got network running OK.

As for music / video I would tend to go for something like KODI on the remote devices or PLEX if you can install stuff say on a Smart TV or an amazon fire TV device / Roku device etc.

I found that I get excellent music using KODI on amazon fire TV, and then from TV audio optical output use a Blue tooth set of speakers with a blue tooth transmitter to get the sound. (can actually use wired but blu tooth quality on decent Bose speakers is just fine).

For handset you can either use a mobile phone or the Amazon TV]'s controller -- KODI handles even more codecs than VLC including m2ts - it plays flac / mp3 /mp4 etc without any problem as well as .mkv, .avi etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo

Samuria · 08 Jan 2018

You have setup share permission but you have to set NTFS permissions as that will block it

jimbo45 · 08 Jan 2018

Hi there @dortmunder

Updated my previous post to show 2 X Windows 10 (1 is a VM and another a physical machine) and 2 NAS (Linux) servers -- all visible to each other and to the Android devices.

Had initial problems when the Non Windows devices wanted to access Windows -- everything working fine now.

Cheers
jimbo

dortmunder · 08 Jan 2018

Hi guys and thanks for the comments. My other devices are 'SAMBA' and SMB1 and SMBDirect are On. (Incidentally, the other devices also have UPnP and that system works fine with my PC...) Network discovery is On.
I had a look at the Firewall page - a bit daunting. How do I tell whether remote connections are allowed or not?
"you have to set NTFS permissions as that will block it" Can you explain further please? I thought NTFS permissions were merely the Read/Write/Modify options (which are all ticked).
My continued thanks.

Samuria · 08 Jan 2018

Your showing the share option NTFS are permission on each folder depending who owns the folder if its in a usesrs profile even admin will be blocked even if on the pc locally Setting NTFS Permissions

dortmunder · 08 Jan 2018

Thanks for that. I've attached some screenshots - perhaps someone could check to see that all is as it should be?
And I really don't know how to check the firewall (Windows firewall only) to see if it allows remote connections so if someone could help with that, that'd be great.
Now this might be a daft question - My C drive is for the OS only and my shared folder is on the F drive. Should the entire F drive be 'shared' in the same way as the folder? (I've never seen this mentioned in any tutorial).

Guys - thank you, I mean it, I really want to crack this problem.