Jump to content
  • 0

Constant intermittent errors: You May Not Have Permissions to Use This Network Resource ... Not Enough Server Storage is Available to Process This Cmd


RogerDodger

Question

I installed the new Beta version of Stablebit Drivepool (2.0.0.260) on a Windows 7 64bit server.  Before installing Drivepool, I added a new OS hard drive (server grade 10,000rpm) and did a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate on the following platform:  Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8200 @ 2.66GHz / Supermicro X7SBL-LN2 motherboard / 4GB RAM.  The CPU & MB are both approved for Win7 64 bit.

 

I had converted this platform from WHS v1, which does not easily support 3+TB HDDs and thanks to MS which Drive Extender has basically been end-of-lifed.  I chose Windows 7 Ultimate because of it's stability, tools, support ... and because I do not need backup (I have a separate WHS V1 server dedicated for that).  This server is just for media storage and streaming, not really much else.

 

The server is in the Norco 4220 chassis with 20 hot swappable bays and mini SAS backplane.  I built that as a scalable solution so I could simply add HDDs as needed over time.  Currently there is nothing running on this server except Windows 7 Ultimate, uTorrent and VideoLAN.  I installed SB Drivepool on 5/26 and have since had ongoing stability issues.

 

Currently I am having the following problems:

 

- Every now and then the Drivepool UI doesn't work.  I know I just delete everything in the C:\ProgramData\StableBitDrivePool folder and then reboot.  After rebooting today the problem has appeared yet again.  It's annoying that I have to keep deleting this folder for the UI to work. 

 

- The desktop has a black screen for a background.  I don't really care, but clearly there is some kind of conflict.  When I set the desktop to a picture or theme, it does not last. 

 

- Most importantly, when I use Windows Explorer to access folders in the Drivepool over the network, I am getting intermittent errors that say "Directory is Invalid" for any file I try to access ... and for any folder I try accessing, I get "(foldername) is Not Accessible.  You May Not Have Permissions to Use This Network Resource ... Not Enough Server Storage is Available to Process This Command."  These two errors are interrelated and appear whenever the same root issue is at cause.  Moreover, they disappear on their own ... then reappear seemingly without reason.  It happened last night, then after I rebooted they went away.  Today, they appeared suddenly, then went away, then re-appeared, then went away.  Now an hour later they are back and won't go away. 

 

 

Note that I have several folders set up in the Drivepool including Movies, Videos, Recorded TV, Music, etc.  I enabled "folder sharing" for each of these folders by going to properties/sharing tab.  What's more, I ensured proper permissions for every conceivable user account on the network by going to the security tab in properties and giving permissions to administrator, guest, remote desktop user, everyone, me, my wife, etc etc.  Idea was to eliminate any possible sharing/permission conflict.

 

As of now I do not have reliable access to my data.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

PS - I just deleted everything in the C:\ProgramData\StableBitDrivePool folder and rebooted.  Now I have two "DrivePool" links pinned to the start menu.  What's more, neither of them will start Drivepool.  To be sure, I opened Task Manager and watched as I clicked on the Drivepool link.  I can see Drivepool.UI.exe appear suddenly, then it's gone.  Meanwhile, the Windows timer continues for a few seconds, then stops.

 

Same thing happens if I go to "All Programs"->Stablebit Drivepool and click on the Stablebit Drivepool link. 

 

So as of now I have no access to the Drivepool UI. 

 

Meanwhile, the errors for "Directory is Invalid" and "(foldername) is Not Accessible.  You May Not Have Permissions to Use This Network Resource ... Not Enough Server Storage is Available to Process This Command" have disappeared - for now.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Update - rebooted again, used RDP to remote into server, clicked on the Stablebit Drivepool link in the startup menu ... STILL DOES NOT WORK.  It's the same as before, on Task Manager I see Drivepool.UI.exe appear momentarily, then disappear.  The UI never starts.  To be sure, I also went to C:/Programs/Stablebit/Drivepool and clicked Drivepool.UI.exe.  Same thing. 

 

 

This is quite lame and I am getting frustrated that this product is so unstable and unreliable. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I am getting very frustrated ... as of now I cannot access my data due to this unreliable/unstable product.  

 

It's bad enough the GUI doesn't work and it creates a black desktop when access my server via RDP, but this problem with the Drivepool having such problems with Windows sharing & permissions is ridiculous.  It's very unstable, either working temporarily or not at all.  I know this is a Beta, but I expected something more reliable and stable.  Instead I am constantly wondering whether it will work, reboot my computers and messing with settings. 

 

I've emailed Covecube support today several updates with detailed information ... plus I've posted here in hopes of receiving some guidance.  Still waiting on both.  Meantime I am sitting here without my data while spending a lot of time on it.  Just weak sauce overall. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
Hi RogerDodger, it's been less than seven hours since your first post on this subject (I don't work for Covecube so I don't know if you've previously submitted error reports to them directly before today), and that means it was 5pm on a Friday in Covecube's timezone (United States eastern seaboard). So it's now almost midnight for them. Please don't expect an instant 24/7 response for software you know is in beta. They're still human, they still need to sleep (and even if they were awake and at work, a beta means it's unlikely yours is the only bug that needs fixing).
 
For what it's worth, DrivePool can reveal underlying bugs in the Windows/device layers (e.g. because DrivePool requires multiple drives to be operating together as a unified pool, requiring those layers to work harder). That's not DrivePool's fault.
 

So re your comment "The desktop has a black screen for a background.  I don't really care, but clearly there is some kind of conflict.  When I set the desktop to a picture or theme, it does not last." - DrivePool has nothing to do with your display drivers nor the Windows display subsystem. Even if you'd set a picture from the pool as a background, Windows caches that picture as a rendered bitmap in a system directory and loads it from there. I would be testing the RAM, CPU, HDDs, backplane, etc. Do you have any stress-testing software?

 
Also, I hope you were uninstalling DrivePool or at least stopping the DrivePool service before deleting the C:\ProgramData\StableBitDrivePool folder.
 
Finally, your data is still available within the individual drives, as DrivePool keeps them as standard files within hidden Poolpart folders in the root of each - so if you urgently need a file in the pool it can still be found that way (I suggest using a program that quickly and easily search your NTFS drives, e.g. VoidTool's Everything).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

No worries, I don't expect 24/7 support. Just expressing frustration at what is becoming a fairly bad experience.

 

Right now access to the Drivepool over the network is intermittent.

 

Before I explain what's going on, first let me share that I am having several tabs of Windows Explorer open on my desktop. Each tab is pointing to the drivepool. I leave these tabs open 24/7. Basically this allows me to access files and folders in the drivepool as I desire.

 

Here's what happens when the issues occur:

 

- When I click on one of the files in a drivepool folder that is already open on my desktop, I get an error message that says the "Directory Name is Invalid". Any file I click on gets the same error message. At this point, basically I have lost connection to the Drivepool ... meaning no matter which tab of Windows Explorer I switch to, none of them are able to access any file or folder in the Drivepool anymore.

 

- If I refresh any folder, I get the following error message "(foldername) is Not Accessible ... You May Not Have Permissions to Use This Network Resource ... Not Enough Server Storage is Available to Process This Command". A this point the folders, files and drivepool disappear and I can no longer see them over the network.

 

- However, if I RDP into the server that houses the drivepool, I can use Windows Explorer to see and access the folders & files locally. I tested this by checking at a time when I was getting the errors and had become disconnected from the drivepool. All I did was remote into the server, then used Explorer to access the folders and files - including playing back a movie.

 

So something is causing a conflict between my Win 7 Ultimate PC and the Win 7 Ultimate server whereby I cannot maintain 24/7 accessibility to the drivepool.

 

I don't believe it's related permissions as I have granted full permissions to every imaginable user (Administrator, Guest, Everyone, Myself, HomeGroup User, etc). Not sure if there's some kind of heartbeat or timeout thing between my Windows Explorer sessions and Drivepool ... or if it's Firewall related ... or what.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Hmm. Based on those error messages and what you've described, while waiting for Covecube I'd be eyeing the network drivers for the machines (client, server or both), checking for excessive memory utilisation (paged vs non-paged pools), and whether booting with utorrent disabled (and keeping it disabled until you observe whether the effect still occurs or should have occurred by that time if utorrent wasn't the problem) has any effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Thanks for the troubleshooting ideas.

Both PCs are Win 7 Ultimate, with the server being a fresh install on a new 10,000rpm server OS drive and the other being a recent build on a combo SSD/10K rpm HDD. The server doesn't have any apps other than uTorrent which basically I am not using (I use another PC on the network for this instead). CPU and memory utilization are low.

For my PC, I have an Intel 3770S i7 & 16GB of 1333mhz RAM. CPU load is usually very low and I keep memory utilization 50% or less. Sometimes it goes higher thanks to many things I have open on my desktop (and from memory leaking stuff like Yahoo mail), but I always have Task Manager / processes open on my desktop to keep an eye on things.

By network drivers do you mean the drivers for my NIC? If so I could try removing & re-installing.

Right now I am going to run CHKDSK to check files, sectors, etc on the server OS drive ... though it's basically brand new I want to make sure there are no issues. I've always had good luck with drives but I've heard many times how other people haven't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Yes, I meant NIC drivers, checking whether latest version (or if already latest, possibly trying a previous version). When you lose network access to the pool, do you also lose access to non-pool shares on the server? Do you lose it from all machines on the network or just the new client? Does the problem go away (even temporarily) if you reboot the client rather than the server? Does rebooting the switch/router that connects them have any effect?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Thanks for your help & ideas.  Turns out after I ran SFC & CHKDSK that I found a few bad clusters.  Worse yet, there were some corrupt system files that I could not recover with SFC or Win 7 Repair.  This included something to do with Windows Update and .NET Framework which basically disallowed me from doing updates and worse yet running DrivePool.  The good news here for CoveCube and other DrivePool users is that the Win 7 64bit product itself isn't unstable.  Instead it was my HDD (which is a brand new server-grade 10K disk). 

 

After all was said & done, I ended up doing a Win 7 re-install.  But instead of doing a fresh install, I did an "upgrade" which allowed me to keep all my settings, configurations, apps, etc in place while just overlaying the sys files.  But now I am unable to uninstall DrivePool, which I need to do in order to re-install and re-create the DrivePool.  Working with CoveCube on this.  Just may turn out that I have to do a fresh install ... but hoping not because it's a PITA.  I already spent 18 hours in the past 3 days trying to get this solved which is time I don't have. 

 

So I'm hoping to snuff out any last traces of DP and just re-install.  That will save me time & effort.  But if need be I may have do the fresh installation of Win 7 64bit ...  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Question for Resident Guru or anyone reading ... when I do the clean install of Win 7, should I disconnect the Data drives first?  Also, should I delete the Poolpart folders in each Data drive?  As of now, all the Poolpart folders are intact and the Data drives are attached. 

 

As part of the clean install, I will be sure to do all the updates, and also update .NET to 4.0 (when I re-installed Win 7 yesterday I was on .NET 3.5).  Once the pool is set up I will share the folders, then add permissions to all the user accounts as I did before.  Then I'll use Windows Transfer for settings, appdata etc.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Definitely don't delete the poolpart folders. That's where the actual data resides!  

But it would be best to remove the drives first, just to make things easier. And then reconnect them after the OS is installed. Once DrivePool is installed, it will recognize the "old" pool immediately.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Drashna - it's Roger, you helped me out with how to transfer my data from WHS V1 to DrivePool + Win 7 on the WeGotServed site. After receiving your guidance (thanks again), things came up and the project went to the sidelines for a while. Then once I picked it back up and got the system running, I started getting errors. Turns out they were all related to a bad OS HDD. My luck has always been good when it comes to drives, but that ended.

First, I had a brand new WD 10,000rpm 2.5 enterprise/server-grade HDD that turned out to have bad sectors and thousands of bad blocks. Then, the subsequent one I purchased from a second source (Newegg vs Amazon) ended up being DOA. So I did a fresh install on a new 5400rpm Toshiba I happened to have on hand. Won't offer the performance & possibly the long term reliability of the WD, but good enough for now.

A few notes to share for you and Shane (who I also helped me before elsewhere):

- I used Windows Easy Transfer after the fresh install. I should have known it wouldn't work on StableBit DrivePool given the registry entries and what not. Anyways, the key is that programs carried over from Easy Transfer do not load in Windows "Add/Remove Programs" feature in the control panel. Surely other people knew this but I did not. Anyways, I ended up just downloading & installing DrivePool right over what was on my system. It worked fine. But it took quite some effort to set up WHS Connector, which I ended up having to roll back to an earlier OS (Vista SP2) in repair via Add/Remove Programs for it to be "compatible" with my OS. Just another great example of MS interoperability.

- Changing the drive letter for the DrivePool was easy using Disk Management. Just change, reboot, done.

- Sharing and permissions is another example of arcane, confusing, aggravating implementation by Microsoft. It took a while, but now all shared folders in the DrivePool are easily accessible over my home network.

- Now that I loaded the newest version of DrivePool, I see that folder duplication is offered. This is terrific as it's a critical feature for me.

All in all, I will continue to monitor how DrivePool works on Windows 7 Ultimate. It's only been a day since everything has been installed & configured, but so far it looks stable. For me, this could prove to be a nice, easy to manage long term solution. My platform is the Norco 4220 with 20 hot-swappable drive bays. I wanted a scalable long-term solution where I could just drop in HDDs as needed. With DrivePool giving me a shared HDD pool, and an OS like Win 7 with all it's tools and support, it seemed like the stable, scalable solution I was envisioning.

Thanks for all your help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Glad to have helped. :)

 

As for drives... I've had good and bad luck. It's just a game of chance... but I also try avoiding new lines for six months or so, just to avoid issues. May be a good idea for the future.

 

As for Windows Easy Transfer, yeah, it doesn't get everything. Not unless you know exactly where to look. However, the activation ID for DrivePool, we can always reset that on our end. And if you're using the same hardware (and HDD, unfortunately for you), you may not even need to reset the activation.

 

 

And yeah, shared folders and the permissions stuff can be a real nightmare if you don't know exactly what you're doing here. Microsoft has taken steps to make it easier... but until they come out with something like WHS's wizard...

 

And if you don't mind command line, there is the "dpcmd" executable that you can manually change the duplication status for folders on the WHS version:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Utilities

 

 

And as for the "nice, easy to manage long term solution", that's exactly what we aim for. Especially that nice and easy part. 

I also run a Norco 4220, and am very happy with it. If you haven't already, you may want to consider getting a SAS card to hook up all the bays.

(my only issue is that the case was a demo unit and at least one of the "rails" is defective, as in only one HDD works on the one rail).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Drasha,

 

Thanks for your insight and of course all your support.  I did add the SAS cards ... about a year ago I bought two Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8's.  Only needed one but figured it would be easier if I kept consistent HW.   

 

Later I found that I may have a defective rail as well.  Not sure if the mini-SAS connector pins lifted from the board or what, but one rail isn't working.  Right now I have 3 HDD banks filled and the pool is 25TB.  I'm only using about 55-60% of the space but that will change as I start implementing folder duplication.  I can add at least another bank of HDDs, then after that unless I can get the bad rail working I'll probably just build another server.  If so, I'll likely split my pools so certain data (movies, etc) is in one while other data (everything else) is in the other. 

 

Question - how much do you trust 4TB HDDs?  I read this and it looked promising http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-3132_7-57586341-98/wd-ships-low-cost-high-grade-4tb-hard-drive/

 

PS - if you don't already know this and you'll be using AOC-SASLP-MV8 expansion cards for your server, you need an updated driver to support 3TB+ drives.  They can be found here under Marvel 64xx RAID SAS Drivers http://www.hdsentinel.com/driverzone.php

 

Trying to give back.  :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Ah, yeah, defective rails. :( 

I have one partial (only one drive bay works), and I think I have another rail that doesn't work at all. There are 2 that I know work (I have 8HDDs attached). But, considering it was a demo unit, and I got it for just the shipping, I'm not complaining. Just wish it wasn't $50 to replace a rail. Norco does sell replacement RAILs. I can get you a link if you want. But like I said, it's around $50 per, IIRC.

 

 

As for the 4TB drives, they've been out for a decent while, so they should be pretty good by now (worst case, check for firmware updates before using the drives). Personally, I prefer Seagate Drives, they run a bit warmer, but I get better performance out of them.

 

 

As for the expansion card, thanks for the info.  I use a HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL card actually. Fairly cheap, and a decent card. I only use it to pass through drives, but it supports 8 bays. I have another PCI express slot, and will be getting another one of these cards eventually.  But it also needs a firmware update to read 3+TB drives too.  But drivers and firmware are the first things I check with new stuff. It's just a good habit.

(though if you really want to contribute there is this: http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/36-how-to-contribute-test-data/) Add some data for StableBit Scanner. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I haven't looked closely but how much of a PITA is it to replace a rail? I'm not getting anything to work on one of them and I tried all the bays several times from L to R and vice versa.

Good to know the 4TB drives are achieving reliability. Like what WD is doing with migrating enterprise quality to consumer drives. I keep an eye on both Seagate & WD to see how they are doing ... I'm in the STB biz so it does matter. PS - agree about checking firmware. I learned the hard way.

How are you using your Norcoserver? For me, as you know it's really about media storage and streaming. I collected a ton of movies & videos over the years and realized I needed that long-term, reliable scalable solution we talked about (GREAT to hear that's CoveCube's aim with DrivePool). I have a separate server for backups (using WHS v1), so I don't need it for that.

I believe I shared with you previously that I was using WHS v1 as the OS for the Norco. With Drive Extender, I built a nice folder structure that allowed me to access videos, movies, photos and other stuff the way I wanted. But as you know MS booted DE in subsequent versions. That and it didn't support 3TB drives with ease.

So for my situation, I needed a solution that allowed me to retain the folder structure I built ... provided simple folder duplication for redundancy (I didn't need everything duplicated) ... and where the OS was stable/reliable, easy to use, had plenty of support/tools/etc and best of all that I would be familiar with. That's why I was very happy when you helped me determine that StableBit DrivePool + Windows 7 was a viable long-term stable OS/SW solution for an extendable HW platform. Perfect.

Altogether, this solution has replaced the previous one. Back in 2008 when I was doing all the homework to figure out what the best strategy would be to play back media to the TV, the options seemed to be HTPC, a media extender of some type, or a STB. I rebuilt my PC to support an extender if needed (it was due for a rebuild anyways), but ultimately I chose a STB. At the time I was ready to get one, the Popcorn Hour C200 was released. I chose that because it had a large support community and more importantly its legendary codec support.

It did a good job - most of the time. But I ended up finding that the thing would crap out more than I anticipated. Basically if the encoding job on the video was poor, or the codec wasn't supported (audio, video or the combination), it would render the embedded media player into an unrecoverable state. The only fix was a hard boot. Given how often there are poor encode jobs done on internet videos ... and how many combinations of audio/video codecs there can be, it ended up that the Popcorn Hour was actually a Poopcorn Hour.

Nothing like watching a movie ... then suddenly in the middle it freezes and you have to get up off the couch to hard boot the box, go thru the menus again, bring up the movie and find your spot again. It's not a big deal if it only happens 1 in 10-15 times, but not when it's 1 in 4-5 times. Internet videos were worse. Overall, it just became clear I needed a new solution.

That's when I realized that I should just stream directly from my PC using VLC as the player. Seems like only 1 in 10,000 videos ever gives VLC a problem, plus it's tools, support and updates are fantastic. So that's what I did. Basically now I have a 20ft HDMI cable going from the Primary PC to my Panasonic Plasma. Using a wireless QWERTY/touchpad remote, I can navigate Windows Explorer on the Primary PC to play movies & videos using VLC flawlessly. No more crapouts. I can also use a browser to access YouTube or anything else, plus I can easily view photos on TV.

Basically I have the same setup in my bedroom - HDMI out from Master PC (to a switch) to my plasma. Same remote setup. Works like a charm. But with the Ceton card in my PC, now I have access to all my cable channels as well. Even better, the non-copy protected TV content is accessible over the network via a share in the Master PC.

When I bought my house it came with Cat-5e structured-home wiring, so with the Norcoserver housing all the media, now I can access the movies & videos in any room over the home network. Ditto for the TV shows being collected from my cable service in the Master PC. This is nice because now all this content is easy to find, plus if I want I can make it portable for when I travel.

The key to it all is the Norcoserver ... which is why I wanted a reliable, scalable, long-term solution.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

I haven't looked closely but how much of a PITA is it to replace a rail? I'm not getting anything to work on one of them and I tried all the bays several times from L to R and vice versa.

As for replacing the Rail... I don't know yet. I'll make sure to let you know as soon as I do it. It shouldn't be too difficult (famous last words, and all.... :P)

 

Good to know the 4TB drives are achieving reliability. Like what WD is doing with migrating enterprise quality to consumer drives. I keep an eye on both Seagate & WD to see how they are doing ... I'm in the STB biz so it does matter. PS - agree about checking firmware. I learned the hard way.

Check out the WD Reds for STBs. They're like the WD Green, but ... fixed and designed for NAS usage (aka, constant usage and long uptime). May be a great idea. (and yeah, same with the firmware...)

How are you using your Norcoserver? For me, as you know it's really about media storage and streaming. I collected a ton of movies & videos over the years and realized I needed that long-term, reliable scalable solution we talked about (GREAT to hear that's CoveCube's aim with DrivePool). I have a separate server for backups (using WHS v1), so I don't need it for that.

I'm using it for storage and streaming. I use Server 2012 Essentials, as I've been using Active Directory/domains since I figured out how to do so on WHSv1. I use Serviio and Subsonic for streaming. I also use it to host some web content (a blog or two). As well as for "Windows Deployment Services", which is a PXE (network) boot server.

 

I believe I shared with you previously that I was using WHS v1 as the OS for the Norco. With Drive Extender, I built a nice folder structure that allowed me to access videos, movies, photos and other stuff the way I wanted. But as you know MS booted DE in subsequent versions. That and it didn't support 3TB drives with ease.

 

So for my situation, I needed a solution that allowed me to retain the folder structure I built ... provided simple folder duplication for redundancy (I didn't need everything duplicated) ... and where the OS was stable/reliable, easy to use, had plenty of support/tools/etc and best of all that I would be familiar with. That's why I was very happy when you helped me determine that StableBit DrivePool + Windows 7 was a viable long-term stable OS/SW solution for an extendable HW platform. Perfect.

 

Altogether, this solution has replaced the previous one. Back in 2008 when I was doing all the homework to figure out what the best strategy would be to play back media to the TV, the options seemed to be HTPC, a media extender of some type, or a STB. I rebuilt my PC to support an extender if needed (it was due for a rebuild anyways), but ultimately I chose a STB. At the time I was ready to get one, the Popcorn Hour C200 was released. I chose that because it had a large support community and more importantly its legendary codec support.

 

It did a good job - most of the time. But I ended up finding that the thing would crap out more than I anticipated. Basically if the encoding job on the video was poor, or the codec wasn't supported (audio, video or the combination), it would render the embedded media player into an unrecoverable state. The only fix was a hard boot. Given how often there are poor encode jobs done on internet videos ... and how many combinations of audio/video codecs there can be, it ended up that the Popcorn Hour was actually a Poopcorn Hour.

 

Nothing like watching a movie ... then suddenly in the middle it freezes and you have to get up off the couch to hard boot the box, go thru the menus again, bring up the movie and find your spot again. It's not a big deal if it only happens 1 in 10-15 times, but not when it's 1 in 4-5 times. Internet videos were worse. Overall, it just became clear I needed a new solution.

 

That's when I realized that I should just stream directly from my PC using VLC as the player. Seems like only 1 in 10,000 videos ever gives VLC a problem, plus it's tools, support and updates are fantastic. So that's what I did. Basically now I have a 20ft HDMI cable going from the Primary PC to my Panasonic Plasma. Using a wireless QWERTY/touchpad remote, I can navigate Windows Explorer on the Primary PC to play movies & videos using VLC flawlessly. No more crapouts. I can also use a browser to access YouTube or anything else, plus I can easily view photos on TV.

 

Basically I have the same setup in my bedroom - HDMI out from Master PC (to a switch) to my plasma. Same remote setup. Works like a charm. But with the Ceton card in my PC, now I have access to all my cable channels as well. Even better, the non-copy protected TV content is accessible over the network via a share in the Master PC.

 

When I bought my house it came with Cat-5e structured-home wiring, so with the Norcoserver housing all the media, now I can access the movies & videos in any room over the home network. Ditto for the TV shows being collected from my cable service in the Master PC. This is nice because now all this content is easy to find, plus if I want I can make it portable for when I travel.

 

The key to it all is the Norcoserver ... which is why I wanted a reliable, scalable, long-term solution.

And well said for the rest of it. And nice setup. :)

I've tried using some of the network media players... but I've had issues with them too. I've had to return my WD Live Plus HD (first gen) three different times... So, I stopped using that and opted for XMBC on Windows. Using the MySQL sync trick. :) Works very well for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...