connect to Windows 7 PC w/o login work around.

[Udok]

Did everything as explained in above tutorial. Easy. Amended the registry. Easy. Still had to log in using Guest/Blank. Saw "Network" and was happy. Then I updated firmware and I "thought I had". Got a laptop hard drive and formatted. PBO saw the drive. Took box to PC and put in 211 gigs of video . Hooked it back to the TV and nothing in hard drive. Started having trouble getting into the network. Curious.
Messing around for hours heard the box getting louder. Box was getting warm and wireless dongle was hot. Put original firm ware back in. Got into the network with a band width of 700 to 9ooK. The dongle was pretty hot. Network kept dropping out. Could not see any files in hard drive.
Updated firmware, saw a post where an external drive was only useful after that. Formatted drive and took it back to the videos. Hooked box back to TV and drive is full of videos.
Conclusion: I went through many pains to realize that hard drives only work with the beta firmware. The patriot dongle that Amazon threw in for free is most likely fried. You get what you pay for.
A friend of mine in Germany had gotten the Western Digital box and loves it. Simple remote, much better GUI and saw his external drive right away.
Can't figure out how to copy from thumb drive to hard drive. Box just creates more directories.

The other conclusion: I hope Patriot gets this really user friendly, and maybe publish a proper manual using all functions of the GUI. I would not recommend this to anybody unless it is wired into a network. My wife looks at all the inputs just to get a movie off the drive and shakes her head. For her I will most likely burn more disk. Ah well, I ramble.

[Exist2Resist]

I got this working flawlessly when i got my PBO, however after about a month of use it now prompts me for a password every time i log onto the network. Sometimes it even doesn't accept the blank user name and password until i power cycle the unit.

[Fershlugg]

I also wanted to note that in order to get this working on my Win 7 Ultimate 64 machine acting as my server two things had to happen.

1. I had to enable Homegroups and join my computer to a home group. After this i was able to right click a folder, select share with > Homegroup (Read) and add "everyone" with read only permissions. This allows me to log into the share with no credentials necessary

I had to do exactly that as well. Thanks for the tip.

[Charuto]

I have a Windows 7 x64 desktop with 3 hard drives in it. I can get to the second and third hard drives through PBO without any issues, but the drive with the OS on it keeps prompting me for a password. I even tried partitioning that drive-one for the OS and the other for storage-and I still can't access either. Any thoughts?

[aasoror]

I have a Windows 7 x64 desktop with 3 hard drives in it. I can get to the second and third hard drives through PBO without any issues, but the drive with the OS on it keeps prompting me for a password. I even tried partitioning that drive-one for the OS and the other for storage-and I still can't access either. Any thoughts?

Can you get to that drive using other machines on the network ..?

[Charuto]

Can you get to that drive using other machines on the network ..?

Yes, but only because they're on the same Homegroup. When they are not on the Homegroup, I cannot access it through another computer on the network.

I cannot seem to access the drive through the PBO whether the computer is connected to the Homegroup or not. The Homegroup password also doesn't seem to work through PBO, but I'm not sure what I should be entering as a user name. I've tried leaving it blank and using the computer user name and neither worked.

[aasoror]

Yes, but only because they're on the same Homegroup. When they are not on the Homegroup, I cannot access it through another computer on the network.

I cannot seem to access the drive through the PBO whether the computer is connected to the Homegroup or not. The Homegroup password also doesn't seem to work through PBO, but I'm not sure what I should be entering as a user name. I've tried leaving it blank and using the computer user name and neither worked.

OK, its clear now .. the PBO has no notion of Homegroups .. thus if you only enable Homegroups sharing (yes .. this is the recommended sharing method by win 7) there is no way for either the PBO or any pre-Win 7 machine to access your shared folders.

That said, the solution is simple, you need to enable the "classical" folder sharing (i.e. via user accounts regardless of the homegroups or even the workgroup).

The instructions as given in the first post :

2. Click on the down arrow icons and select ON/OFF as follows:
Network Discovery - ON
File Sharing - ON
Public Folder Sharing - OFF
Printer Sharing - ON
Password Protected Sharing - OFF
Media Sharing - OFF

Additionally (as I have just checked my network settings now)
- Enable file sharing for devices that use 40 , 56 bit encryption.

Lastly, make sure you are changing the network profile that you are actually using (e.g. home/office)

Also make sure when you are granting access on the share that you are granting access to "EVERYONE" not just "HOMEGROUP"

Hope that helps,

[Charuto]

So I left the Homegroup.

The first page instructions were already heeded.

Changed to allow 40 and 56 bit devices.

For the "Homegroup connections" part of the "Advanced sharing settings", I went with "Use user accounts and passwords to connect to other computers".

My current network is a "Home network".

Still no go. I've reset both the computer and the PBO a few times. What else could I be missing? Is the "enable the 'classical' folder sharing" part different than the "Advanced sharing settings" (ON/OFF part)? Does it matter that I'm trying to share the entire drive instead of just a folder within the drive?

[aasoror]

For the "Homegroup connections" part of the "Advanced sharing settings", I went with "Use user accounts and passwords to connect to other computers".

I have this option set to OFF (i.e. it is set to "let windows manage ...").

Is the "enable the 'classical' folder sharing" part different than the "Advanced sharing settings" (ON/OFF part)?

Yes, what I meant is to set sharing (when you right click a folder and chose sharing) to Everyone or specific users (rather than setting it to "homegroup").

Does it matter that I'm trying to share the entire drive instead of just a folder within the drive?

Well sharing an entire drive never worked for me (I can see the drive from the PBO but can't access it).. sharing folders (and their subfolders as well) works for me.

BTW I didn't need to apply any registry hacks (Windows 7 Pro. x64)

P.S. my Win7 machine is still registered on its "homegroup" (for sharing with other Win7 machines).
This is about all I can think of.

[Charuto]

Thanks. It was trying to share the master drive that was the problem. Everything else works fine, so I'll just settle for sharing the folders within it. Thanks again.