I recently bought a radio from Marks and Spencer. It plays FM and DAB stations, podcasts and music from my PC via Windows Media Player (WMP).
I had it set up to play everything except music from my pc. I followed the manual to set up WMP 11, but without success. I couldn’t think what I was doing wrong, so I phoned the Help Desk only to be given the cliché “Turn it off and on again”. When I suggest that wasn’t the problem, I was advised to return the radio.
I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the radio, so I was reluctant to do that. I searched the Web and found the following fix…
RE: Media Sharing is disabled automatically
OK. I figured it out.
As for the message about "Media Sharing has been disabled", that message went away when I did two things (Not sure which one helped). Remember, my
sharing worked despite this message. That is, as soon as I launched Media Player, the sharing worked AND I got the message at the same time.:1- Enabled the Windows firewall. I usually keep all firealls off on this machine because the network is all trusted and out of the blue things seem to start getting blocked. It is still turned on now and all the networking shares, etc. seem to be working, so I will leave it for now.
2- Removed all users except me on this machine (Vista Ultimate x64). Not sure if this did anything, but I read an article about Media Sharing not turning on if two users have sharing enabled. My other user account was
unused, so not a problem for me. I would try this option last, after the next thing here:3. As for the service not starting until Media Player started, I think this did the trick:
Make sure the "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service" is set to start up with "Automatic". Mine was set for "Automatic (Delayed Start)," which I believe means it doesn't start until it is first called upon...by Media Player (apparently the listener doesn't activate it.).
Here is how I managed that: right-click Computer, chose 'manage' go to 'Services and Applications', chosse 'Services', find 'Windows Media Player Network
Sharing Service', right-click, choose 'properties', under the 'General' tab, choose 'Startup type' as 'Automatic'. Apply and exit.
Hope this helps.
