Sharing problem for Pictures - Empty Folders

Jeddie · 04 Apr 2020

Hello all,

I set up Media sharing way back on my PC (Ver 1903) so I could watch movies, pictures and music on my TV.

I could browse my libraries direct from my TV or I could use Bubbleupnp app on my android phone to select movie or picture and play it on my TV. No problems.

I haven't accessed my libraries for a while until now.
For some reason all my pictures folders appear on both Bubbleupnp and my TV, but the folders are empty? There are no pictures in any folder?

Video/Music library works fine. The problem is only with Pictures Library.

The Pictures library is marked as 'Shared' and to me looks the same as Music/Video setup.

I'm totally stumped? Can somebody help me to troubleshoot this please?

Samuria · 04 Apr 2020

Check share is set to everyone and NTFS is set the same

AirPower4ever · 04 Apr 2020

Also not sure, but throwing it out there. Chasing a problem I have, see if it also happens with you. My backup program is setup to backup docs, music, videos, etc. For some reason in the last few updates only videos gets deleted so the folder ends up empty. I am sure you have a backup system, may be worth to see what goes on when it runs; I'm still chasing this issue.

Jeddie · 06 Apr 2020

Samuria said:

Check share is set to everyone and NTFS is set the same

I've checked and share on both videos & pictures is set to Everyone.

Not sure what you mean by NTFS?

Not sure if this is relevant, but some time ago I tried to move both videos & pictures to my D drive but somehow I got muddled up and decided to revert back to C drive. As I said Video share is working fine.

Anything else I can try?

- - - Updated - - -

Should my shares be appearing under Network in File Explorer?

- - - Updated - - -

Just went into file explorer on my PC > Pictures and selected a folder at random and simply copied a picture into same folder. Lo and behold the copy picture appeared immediately in bubbleupnp? No other pictures appear?

What is going on?

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Anybody able to assist please?

davexnet · 03 May 2021

Did you ever get this sorted? I have a similar problem except mine is the videos library,
none of the files show up either on the TV or in the phone in the server cast app (similar to bubble)

I noticed that if you the right click the folder within the videos library, the permissions are not set properly,
there's a bunch of permissions missing. I've no idea why the system is not setting the correct permissions,
even you add other folders to that videos library, they also don't get set properly You can see in the good image, there are more categories set, plus the WMPservice have some special permissions
specified, this is missing on the system that's not working properly

Sharing problem for Pictures - Empty Folders-permissions_good.png

Sharing problem for Pictures - Empty Folders-permissions_bad.png

Jeddie · 04 May 2021

@davexnet
Yes my issue is solved, but the solution probably won't help you.

I have been thinking about a new PC and finally bought one. It has version 20H2.

Everything works fine.

davexnet · 04 May 2021

Hey, thanks for responding.
There's the network, the libraries (the designated folders with there special permissions)
and the File indexing working together to facilitate the process.

The problem started when I noticed to "videos" entries in Libraries, one with the default, one one with 2 or 3 other folder
I had added. It was all working fine. I tried to merge the folders into one "videos" library entry and I haven't been able to
get it to work since.
I have not given up yet. One thing I noticed, in the phone app, you select videos and it's empty, but if you select "folders"
it says "Error browsing resource, HTTP response 500". I'm going to look in the Windows event viewer for a clue.

I don't understand why setting the libraries back to default doesn't fix it, I guess Microsoft forgot something somewhere

EDIT it's not working yet, but I created a new user profile in the same PC and it's,working there.
Added a few videos and music folders to the default locations, added the location(s) to the search/indexing tool,
made sure they showed up properly in WMP, allowed it some time to create/update its database.
When this was done, control panel, network and sharing, enabled media sharing and authorized the TV and other devices
in the list (I did not do a global authorization for any device that appears on the network)
It worked first time
However, this does not mean that if go back to the original user profile,set it to default and setting it up again
it will work there, so technically I'm still none the wiser

davexnet · 06 May 2021

I found a fix, just by chance, but it seems like a bit of a fluke.
I right clicked videos (1 in the image) and selected "include in Library\Videos" Then the item at (2) appeared. It has the same contents as the original "videos" a folder called "dave" (It's the same one, not a copy)
However, now the files are accessible thru my phone and TV.
Hopefully this will help somebody in the future