geobrick
07-15-07, 06:20 PM
I just wanted to post a fix I found in, some remote corner of the web (the Roku forum), for a problem I've been dealing with for 2 weeks. My hope is that by posting it here, I can save someone else the time it took me to find the solution.
The problem I was having was that 1 out of 3 of my WIN XP SP2 machines with WMP11 installed was not being seen by my DSM-520. I found several related subjects in forums but the one that fixed my 2 week old problem was related to a corrupted DRM file (or folder). The discussion I found was focused on someone using a Roku but the fix should apply to anyone using WMP11 to stream to any media player. Here's the link to that post and the Microsoft link that while not completely accurate (because you never actually "receive an error message"), it describes a method to attempt a fix. http://forums.rokulabs.com/viewtopic.php?p=77797&sid=0d85fd28650adb9a7fee65d96318b68e and http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/faq/drm.mspx#q11_4
The symptom was that the DSM-520 would not show that particular PC's server when searching for available servers on the network. All the other PCs (with sharing set up identically) appeared on the list. The problem PC worked fine when I rolled back to WMP10 (and used media connect). It also worked fine with other media servers but I wanted to use WMP11 (I'll explain why in a different post). Anyone who has rolled back WMP11 to 10 and tried to go back to 11 again knows how unstable that whole process can be. (There's the whole wmplayer.ocx and ocx7 registry ownership issue).
This problem was very well hidden because the WMP11 service that shares the media, wmpnetwk.exe, appeared to be running fine. WMP11 would find the player (DSM-520) and ask for permission to allow it to share media with the player. No problems there. But the DSM-520 still reported no "server found". I even tried several attempts at restarting the wmpnetwk service even though it appeared to be running fine.
It was only after I read the post from GFV on the Roku player that I realized wmpnetwk.exe was effectively not running. The post I found directs you to look at the event viewer (under admin tools in the control panel). There you see an error that shows the wmpnetwk service stopping almost immediately after starting. The error detail says that the DRM files may be corrupted.
First, I don't use DRM at all (to my knowledge). All of my music is extracted .wav files from my own CD's and I have about 10 mp3 files that are DRM free.
To fix my problem, I just deleted everything in the hidden DRM folder and it all worked after that. For others that use DRM, it may be more difficult because Microsoft suggests backing up your license data and then reacquiring the DRM licenses from where ever they came from (WMP11 does not have the DRM backup feature). Fortunately, I don't have to deal with all that.
I hoped this helped anyone searching for a similar solution. And thanks to GFV on the Roku forum for posting this solution.
The problem I was having was that 1 out of 3 of my WIN XP SP2 machines with WMP11 installed was not being seen by my DSM-520. I found several related subjects in forums but the one that fixed my 2 week old problem was related to a corrupted DRM file (or folder). The discussion I found was focused on someone using a Roku but the fix should apply to anyone using WMP11 to stream to any media player. Here's the link to that post and the Microsoft link that while not completely accurate (because you never actually "receive an error message"), it describes a method to attempt a fix. http://forums.rokulabs.com/viewtopic.php?p=77797&sid=0d85fd28650adb9a7fee65d96318b68e and http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/faq/drm.mspx#q11_4
The symptom was that the DSM-520 would not show that particular PC's server when searching for available servers on the network. All the other PCs (with sharing set up identically) appeared on the list. The problem PC worked fine when I rolled back to WMP10 (and used media connect). It also worked fine with other media servers but I wanted to use WMP11 (I'll explain why in a different post). Anyone who has rolled back WMP11 to 10 and tried to go back to 11 again knows how unstable that whole process can be. (There's the whole wmplayer.ocx and ocx7 registry ownership issue).
This problem was very well hidden because the WMP11 service that shares the media, wmpnetwk.exe, appeared to be running fine. WMP11 would find the player (DSM-520) and ask for permission to allow it to share media with the player. No problems there. But the DSM-520 still reported no "server found". I even tried several attempts at restarting the wmpnetwk service even though it appeared to be running fine.
It was only after I read the post from GFV on the Roku player that I realized wmpnetwk.exe was effectively not running. The post I found directs you to look at the event viewer (under admin tools in the control panel). There you see an error that shows the wmpnetwk service stopping almost immediately after starting. The error detail says that the DRM files may be corrupted.
First, I don't use DRM at all (to my knowledge). All of my music is extracted .wav files from my own CD's and I have about 10 mp3 files that are DRM free.
To fix my problem, I just deleted everything in the hidden DRM folder and it all worked after that. For others that use DRM, it may be more difficult because Microsoft suggests backing up your license data and then reacquiring the DRM licenses from where ever they came from (WMP11 does not have the DRM backup feature). Fortunately, I don't have to deal with all that.
I hoped this helped anyone searching for a similar solution. And thanks to GFV on the Roku forum for posting this solution.