Hello,
I'm serving content from a dual-core Vista Home Premium (1.5 GB ram) PC (wireless G to router, strong signal) to a new Xbox 360 (wired to router. I have about 500 albums/10000 songs in my library. I find that the interface is extremely sluggish. When I navigate to Music Library/Albums, it takes about 10-30 seconds for the Xbox to respond to navigation clicks from my remote. Apparently, it needs to refresh my libary (including all the album art) after every reboot. After about 5 minutes or so, navigation is fine, so long as I stay within Albums. If I backtrack to browse via songs or artists, same problem within those new submenus. And I have the same problem when I move back to albums (seems to need to refresh again). Is there anyway to speed this up? Is a copy of the library database (just a list of content, not content itself) stored on the Xbox (have 20 GB HD)? Do I need to optimize my setup somehow? Is 10000 songs too large of a library to serve up to an extender via WMC? Tversity works fine but I'm not a big fan of the non-Windows Media Center interface (lack of album art and I also want access to online DRM download sites (i.e. Movielink)). Is the sluggishness due to my computer or the Xbox 360?
Thanks for any help.

You probably shouldn't use media center. it is a joke.

just connect to your pc's harddrive through the music media tab using the zune software and that will be much more effective.

In media center, go to Tasks/Settings/General/Visual and Sound Effects. Deselect "Use transition animations".

Should clear up the sluggish performance. I was having the same problem.

seems like the problem is related to my pc's wireless g connection to the router. when i cable connect, the sluggishness goes away. i understand having problems trying to serve video when one or more components of a vista media center/xbox setup is wireless. however, i can't believe that there is not enough bandwidth over a strong wireless g connection to serve music and other information required to navigate the UI (xbox is hard wired to router). any suggestions for fixing this? i never notice problems when browsing the internet on my wirelessly connected laptop but perhaps the windows media center connection is periodically dropping out and is more dependent on having continuous connection? maybe there are some vista or router (dlink di-524) settings i need to alter for this not to happen?

thanks for any additional suggestions.