Issue:
I receive an information that the path was not found when playing media through my Windows Media Center Extender.
Solution:
While your Windows Media Center Host PC's session is logged in using the user account you are using to log into Windows, the Windows Media Center extenders are connected using a different user account using an MCX? username, where ? is an internal number of the extender it was given when connected to the Host PC.
Since the the MCX? accounts have a password that is automatically generated, and not locate-able, you are unable to open a share to this user.
This means that the "Path was not found" message comes when the MCX? user account does not have access to the playback path.
The following solutions are available:
- If you are using Windows Home Server 2011 as the storage location for your titles, you must first install the Windows Home Server connector software on the Host PC. Then you must enable the "Guest" account from the Dashboard and give the guest account read access to the share where you store your titles.
- If you are using Windows Server 2012 Essentials as the storage location for your titles, we currently recommend that you either do not use Windows Media Center extenders, or instead use Windows Home Server 2011 which has support for extender usage. Microsoft have in Windows Server 2012 Essentials removed the handling of Windows Media Center extenders, and the option to enable the "Guest" account have been removed from the Dashboard, including the option to give access to the "Guest" account to shares, even if enabled manually over Remote Desktop. Therefore, using Windows Media Center Extenders on Windows Server 2012 is very problematic.
- If you are using a Network Attached Storage device (NAS) that is not Windows based, you must configure the share to be fully open to anonymous users for reading. Depending on the brand of your NAS, this can be difficult, and on some brands even impossible. It is not possible for us to give instructions for each NAS brand, and we therefore recommend looking at the manual of your device, or contact the support of the company who produced it.