Vista Media Sharing error

[mismajor99]

I have a major problem with my Vista 32 installation when I try to share my media with my Xbox 360. When I get to the screen to enable the devices to share with, I get the error :

"windows media player network sharing service stopped working and was closed"

I've looked all over the web, and it seems I'm not the only person with this problem. When i go back to my network settings, I goto look at "Media Sharing", and it says it's "On", but when I select the "Change" button under it, I get the message:

"Media sharing is currently disabled, either because the sharing service is not running or your firewall settings have changed. To restart sharing, you must confirm your sharing settings".

Well, not sure it's my Firewall, as I share media no problem with Vista in my other laptop and my desktop. Has anyone heard of this problem or what I can do besides reformatting the harddrive? I've got about 250gigs of data on this laptop that I don't want to backup, if I don't have too.

Thanks for any and all help, I'm desperate at this point.


-Shawn

 

[mc866]

I've had this error multiple times and there is a step I always forget when I try and connect my 360. The error above is telling you that your WMP sharing services isn't started. To do this:

You need to right click on my computer and go to manage, from there click the + by services and applications, click services. Scroll all the way down till you see Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service, right click this and select properties, make sure this is set to automatic. Restart your PC, try and connect again this should do it for you.

Most of the guides out there don't mention this step but if you don't turn this service on your PC won't be "listening" for the connection from the 360 and you will get errors from both windows and the 360 that the network service isn't working.

 

[mismajor99]

yeah, I started that service multiply times and when I go to turn on media sharing i get the "Windows Media player Network sharing Service stopped working and was closed."

This is exactly my problem. No matter what I do with the service, I get an error when I go to share.

The service is listed as set to Automatic and is "started" when you look at the services list. I wonder, is there another service that it's dependent on?

 

[mc866]

Make sure you aren't running something else that would interfere, what are you using to share? If you are using WMP11 make sure you don't have the zune software or tversity or anything else that would interfere with that service.

Edit:

Also what type of media are you sharing? I know I was trying to stream avi files to my 360, I was able to connect to my PC and see the files but as soon as I tried to stream a movie I would get the same error you had above. Turns out you need to make sure Divx is assigned to handle your divx files and not ffdshow.

 

[mismajor99]

yeah, I've gone over my services to the point of exhaustion. I don't have anything that screw up my sharing services. I use AVG Antivirus, which is the only program I use in the background, i've removed that just to try it out, that of course did nothing. Vista has been one headache after another, and I'm on the verge of uninstalling this POS and putting my XP install on this laptop.

I did read there is a dll file that gets corrupt, but I can't find a place to download it, or know for sure if that's the problem. MS is useless on this matter, like usual too. If you put my message heading into google, there are dozens and dozens of sites with people with the exact problem with the only solution which is to reinstall the OS, which is ridiculous.

 

[mc866]

I would try uninstalling WMP11 before you reinstall windows, possibly see if that helps?

 

[mismajor99]

Hmmm...I don't see where you can uninstall WMP11 with Vista. I redownloaded WMP11 from MS's site, but it won't let me reinstall it. It's apparently built into the OS, unlike XP.

I'm lost.