Can NBR help where WD Support Failed!?

So I recently purchased a WD My Book Live storage device (a couple days ago) to store my videos, music, and photos and stream them to various laptops and other devices in my house.

I have two Acer laptops, an older 5920G and a newer 3820T, an HTPC along with an iPad 2 and an Integra DHC80.3 processor. The PC's are all equipped with Windows 7 64 Bit.

I connected the My Book device to my Cisco dpc3825 router and modem combo (and disconnected my amped SR10000 device to make things a bit less complicated). Ran the setup software using my old 5920G laptop, and everything seemed to be working fine. I could see the drive and folders in the Network section of my computer as follows:



I can also see the music files via DLNA on my Integra 80.3 without issues, and access directories using various apps on the iPad.

Here is where things get wonky. On my Acer 3820T and the HTPC, this is what shows up in the My Computer network section:



I can see the "MyBookLive" under the Storage devices. If I double click on it it takes me to the URL for the drive and the dashboard. However, as you can see, I can't see it in my "Network" folders. So I can't access any of the folders contained on that drive as I can on the Acer 5920G.

I've checked all the network settings, checked the Services to make sure they are the same on all 3 computers, and ensured DNS Client, Function Discovery Resource Publication, SSDP, UPnP and IP Helper are all set to "Automatic" and started.

I've tried installing the "WD My Book Live" setup on the 3820T and HTPC as well even though it's supposedly not needed according to WD Support.

But nothing I do allows me to access the folders on the drive as I can with the other laptop and I am at an utter loss.

WD Support told me to try calling "Windows" or "Acer" to see if they could help but I highly doubt I'll easily get an answer from anyone.

Does anyone here know what could possibly be wrong in the settings or what I should check?!

Thanks!

 

I know it's a crappy workaround but can you map MyBook Live as a networking drive?

I'll try to figure out something better but this should give you access to those folders.

 

So here's the weird thing. If I right click on the WD My Book Live storage icon (in the second capture above), I can click on "open" and it then opens up a new Explorer window identical to the first one and I can access the folders on the drives.

But the PIA is that I can't access the folders from any other application (e.g., Foobar2000 or other apps), which is what I really want to do.

Also, if I type in "Net View" in a CMD prompt, I get "There are no entries in the list" on the 3820T. But on the 5820G, it shows me the networked drives.

I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out what it could be??

Doesn't work on my HTPC either which is mind boggling.

 

Have you checked to make sure the sharing settings in windows are the same on all computers?

 

If you mean the "advanced sharing settings" in the Control Panel, then yes.

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Well, this is strange. I renamed both computers (they were both "stephenpc" so I changed the names to their model #s). Both computers restarted.

Now I can access the My Book live folders on both.

How odd is that?

Time to try it on the HTPC!

 

Hmm, maybe there was a conflict with the names. There are some strange things with sharing in windows. For example, if you change a user account's name, for password protected sharing it's the original name that needs to be used. I learned that the hard way, it might be possible to fix by altering a registry setting, but I don't know which one. I know it's not related to your problem, but you might been victim of a similar quirk.