WINDOWS ISSUES

[rpedde]

The only known showstopping problem with Firefly for Windows has to do with music on network shares. Since firefly runs as a service, it doesn’t have the same mapped drives that you have when logged in, so it can’t find music located on remotely mapped drive letters. You’ll know this is a problem if it starts up and you can connect via the soundbridge or iTunes, but you see no files.

This can be fixed by having the firefly service start as a user that has access to the network share, and by pointing the server to the network share by UNC rather than drive letter.

Step 1: Making the firefly service start as a user

Go into control panel -> administrative tools -> services and find the “Firefly Media Server” service. Look at the properties and select the “logon” tab. Change the service account to on that has permissions to access the network share. (I’d suggest using the user account and password you normally log on with).

Step 2: Setting the music directory by UNC rather than share.

Next, use the tray icon (or the web interface) to set the music directory to the unc path to your music, rather than the drive letter. So rather than “F:iTunes Music”, use “\servershareiTunes Music”, or whatever.

[mikepa]

Could you please be a little more specific about this UNC method ….

My D: drive on my main PC (named Mikes-HP265) has the files I need in the “My Music” directory. The drive is shared as “D”.

so I tried adding

\Mikes-HP265DMy Music

but I still get the Error: 500general:mp3_dir

[rpedde]

@mikepa wrote:

Could you please be a little more specific about this UNC method ….

My D: drive on my main PC (named Mikes-HP265) has the files I need in the “My Music” directory. The drive is shared as “D”.

so I tried adding

\Mikes-HP265DMy Music

but I still get the Error: 500general:mp3_dir

That will work, but you have to make sure you set the user and stop and start the service first. Otherwise you will get an error.

— Ron

[mikepa]

Thanks Ron, that did the trick.

[holsen]

If you are running XP, by default XP will not allow firefly to connect UNLESS, the the User Account you are using REQUIRES A PASSWORD. It took me three weeks to figure this out. I have my PC set for fast logon, so no password is require. I followed all of Ron’s directions but it still wouldn’t work. This evening I changed my XP user account to require a password.

I rebooted, loged in with the password, then went into control panel -> administrative tools -> services and found the “Firefly Media Server” service. Looked at the properties and selected the “logon” tab. Changed the service account to the one I loged on with (that has permissions to access the network share). Used the user account and new password and voila ….. sweet music on the soundbridge! The Missing Piece Was the Password.

[StevenC]

It would be great if both Firefly and Roku compiled one page or post that has all the info needed for PC users. In my case, I wasted hours on first the iTunes site, then the Roku site, and finally on Firefly.

Here is the message that I sent to Roku:

Please provide a prominent trouble-shooting page that has all the info needed to deal with the problems with iTunes 7. I wasted hours today trying to figure out why my Roku Soundbridge had suddenly stopped working. And my first visit to your site was no help at all because I followed the guidance on this page support:
http://www.rokulabs.com/support_sb_ts_msf.php
I did all the steps and none address the problem. Only then did I find part of the solution on Forums, but then I had to dig around to find the rest and then wait for a second scan before I knew it had worked.

Specifically, I upgraded to the most recent iTunes and changed some other settings on my computer and moved the Roku device. I had no idea why my Roku didn’t work after that. Once I finally found the forum that said to install Bonjour and then Firefly, I only had a partial solution because my music is not in my My Music folder but my Playlists are. By default, I had my playlists but no music. Then, I entered my correct library location but then had no playlists. I had to search forums again and piece together several different elements from different posts, trying out different solutions and not knowing if my final guess was correct because it needed to do a new scan before it found them.

If you had told me to do the following, it would have been very helpful:
1) Install Bonjour
2) Install Firefly
3) Open the browser view
4) Add an additional location for my music
(this would have allowed me to leave the My Music location with my playlists and just added an additional location with my library which is on the same computer but a different drive–this is not the Network problem described as the only Windows problem).

For people who have the Network problem, you could that solution, too, but the simple four steps above would have saved me hours of effort and frustration.

[rpedde]

@StevenC wrote:

It would be great if both Firefly and Roku compiled one page or post that has all the info needed for PC users. In my case, I wasted hours on first the iTunes site, then the Roku site, and finally on Firefly.

When you have that worked up in the form of a patch, please email it to me at [email protected].

Docbook sources for the start of a manual are in subversion.

— Ron

[backslash]

I had problems to start FMS at boot. There was no problem for starting manually, but it doesn’t start with windows.

The “Bonjour For Windows” version 1.2.9 was installed I guess with iTunes. So I download the version 1.3.0 and now it’s allright.

Hope it helps

[Kiffy]

If you had told me to do the following, it would have been very helpful:
1) Install Bonjour
2) Install Firefly
3) Open the browser view
4) Add an additional location for my music
(this would have allowed me to leave the My Music location with my playlists and just added an additional location with my library which is on the same computer but a different drive–this is not the Network problem described as the only Windows problem).

Hi,
I wonder how you add an additional location for your music which is on another drive (as mine is). I have opened the browser but can’t find a facility to add another location. I have firefly running but my soundbridge will not locate it – connection to server failed it says – even though it can find the router and play internet radio and recognises new configurations from my computer.

Thanks

[rpedde]

@Kiffy wrote:

I wonder how you add an additional location for your music which is on another drive (as mine is). I have opened the browser but can’t find a facility to add another location.

In the tray icon, there is a button to view the web-based configuration. When you push it, you should get to the web configuration screen. From there, there should be a field for “Music Directory”. You can add multiple music directories from there.

I have firefly running but my soundbridge will not locate it – connection to server failed it says – even though it can find the router and play internet radio and recognises new configurations from my computer.

Is it possible you have a firewall on your computer blocking it?

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