[bangah]

I hope someone who can help me! Searched this forum and found nothing. Jailbroke my apple TV, installed
aTV flash (black) but for the love of God I can't get my XBMC to see my files
on my desktop. I tried file manager, NFS, SMB (restarts on selection) all of
them and nothing? Ok here I go, have a wireless gateway network (Comcast), 2
apple TV's (jailbroke & online) and started having connectivity issues on
desktop (wireless USB) where one apple tv is located (iTunes on that desktop too) so I
jacked an unsecure network (to test), connected both apple tv's to that
network, air play (works) & home sharing (works) but on both apple's neither
sees anything on my desktop where my files and an external HD is located
nothing. I went into Windows Media 12 and shared (allowed) streaming to XBMC
(apple TV) but still nothing...I'm going mad and maybe I'm just not
intelligent enough to "get it" can someone please help or point me to an entity
that can? Thanks in advance.

[g-off]

You won't see ay files when you add a source to xbmc. You specify the path to the files and the type of content. Once that is done you can browse the source using the files option or update the library to have xbmc add all the files it finds.

[procrastinator]

@bangah: Your post is a mess. very hard to follow, so first I want to see if i understand what you're asking:

situation:
* you have a jailbroken ATV2 with aTV flash, and XBMC installed on it (in fact you have two, but that's not relevant right now)
* you are trying to access files on your desktop computer
* you have instructed Windows to share these files by using Windows Media player (WMP)
* you are using a wireless network
* all devices are able to connect to the internet via your wireless router, so all devices are connected to the network

problem:
you cannot access the files from XBMC on ATV2 through NFS or SMB protocols

Suggestion:
If that information is correct, it sounds like you're not sharing the files and looking for the files using the same protocol. I think that making files "shared" in WMP makes them available over UPnP. You can use XBMC to look for content shared via UPnP, and you should be able to play it. However UPnP is not suitable for building a library in XBMC, so a better protocol to use is SMB.

I think that to share your content in Windows you can just right click the folder you want to share, select properties, and adjust the sharing settings in one of the tabs. It might be more complicated than this because of security settings, and whichever version of Windows you're using. Do a google search to find out how to set it up on your version of Windows. Anyway, once you've got that set up properly you should be able to find it in XBMC by looking for SMB sources.

additional problems:
* flakey network connection from desktop - I've not got any suggestions to fix this, but do bear in mind that the reason you might not be finding anything might be because the desktop isn't connected to the network when the ATV is looking for it.
* Are you saying that looking for SMB sources causes XBMC to crash?? I'm not really clear on this. If yes, you should supply a debug log [HOWTO link]

EDIT: I went away and came back whilst writing this post. In the meantime g-off rightly said that you'll only be able to see the files in a source once you've added it.

[bangah]

@procrastinator and thanks g-off for the replies. procrastinator ur asterisk points are dead on and my problem is exactly as you mentioned. I've shared my files at the folder level and through WMP 12 using Windows 7 (32-bit). I'll try mapping using UPnP again however when I select the SMB:// my XBMC closes? Perhaps with UPnP I'm not entering the proper path, so I'll try it again.

In any event, it doesn't matter 4 me to build a library in XBMC, I'd love to just be able to view my files on my external HD. Intermitent connection probaly, like I said my wireless network isn't working in my roomso I'm using an open connection that belongs to whomever.

Since it sounds like I may need to pay closer attention to the path I'm entering I'm going back in. Spent about 2 days googling and trying 2 find more information so thanks again. Hope to report better news.

[bangah]

I think this is beyond me and the rest of my life is too important to spend one more second figuring this out. I'm not an idiot by far, but this has gotten way oout of comtrol 4 me...

[Memphiz]

Good choice then i guess - if i only had taken the blue pill too once they asked me *sigh*