Connecting 2 PCs to an Xbox 360

[Pony_Boy]

My gf and I just bought an Xbox360 (yay!!!!) Besides the gaming our favorite feature is the ability to stream videos from a laptop to the Xbox wirelessly.

Now the problem is. We want to connect both our laptops to the Xbox so we can stream movies from either one. In other to do this we created a home workgroup. My laptop connects perfectly fine. I can stream to the Xbox and my gf can see my shared folder from her laptop. However, The xbox does not "see" my gf's laptop and I can not see her shared folder from my laptop at all

sorry if this is rambling typing out a post while on theraflu isn't that easy.

any advice?

[Duncan MacLeod]

Make sure that file and printer sharing is enabled on your GF's PC... Even if you have a homegroup set up, this would be invisible if file and print sharing is set to "off" if you have Windows 7 you can just type in "file and print sharing" in the start menu.

[lordlundar]

Which brings up the next point: the OS. If I recall correctly, the 360 requires a version of Media Center installed on the PC for it to accommodate the streaming capabilities.

The versions of Windows that have it are:

Windows XP Media Center Edition
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Ultimate
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 7 Ultimate

If you don't have any of those, then the 360 might not see it. (I'm guessing, it's been a while since I needed that information to be honest.)

[SuperDan]

I've also run into problems networking at all using computers with Vista Home Premium. They just seriously don't play well with others. I've found that other computers could see the existence of the Vista computer but not access it while the Vista computer could not see anything. Much digging online and many frustrated hours only turned up the fact that Vista Home Premium is a piece of shit and the networking task I was attempting was literally impossible. It is a possibility, if the offensive laptop is running Vista Home Premium, that it just doesn't play well with others and just needs to be beaten within an inch of its life, nursed back to health, then burned replaced with another operating system that doesn't suck.

[simplyanother]

When I stream from the laptop to the xbox360 I use TVersity, which I had way more success with than using media center.

I used it when I had my old laptop that ran Vista, and my new one that runs Windows 7 and does have the media center thingy (that I don't use). It's probably not any help to you, sorry. But I thought I'd put it out there.

[Fire_on_High]

I've also run into problems networking at all using computers with Vista Home Premium. They just seriously don't play well with others. I've found that other computers could see the existence of the Vista computer but not access it while the Vista computer could not see anything.

Weird....99% of the time mine's utterly cooperative. It does occasionally crap itself and start doing that, but the net connection still works fine, oddly enough. Either way...once it starts doing that and I notice, a quick reboot fixes it reliably. Issue comes up maybe every couple of months, tops.

[SuperDan]

Weird....99% of the time mine's utterly cooperative. It does occasionally crap itself and start doing that, but the net connection still works fine, oddly enough. Either way...once it starts doing that and I notice, a quick reboot fixes it reliably. Issue comes up maybe every couple of months, tops.

My dad's laptop never fully cooperated, as far as I know, to this day. It accesses the Internet just fine, but it never was able to do file or printer sharing. Ever.

[underemployeed]

Vista works depending on your technical level, if you have no idea how a computer works and want to do the basic microsoft tasks, it works. If you know computers you know it runs slower than XP and constantly asks "Are you sure you want to do that" ... yes "Ok what you are doing COULD be dangerous", im aware and accept the risks, "Ok one last time are you sure you wnat to do this " , yes I AM SURE, "Ok, thank you but we don't believe you really know so you can't do what you want, sorry"..... why did I just say I knew what I was doing 4X to be told to piss off?

END RANT BEGIN HELP

My brother has his 360 linked to my HomeTheater PC that has a tv tuner so he can watch episodes with the 360, about the only thing I can think of is to add your gfs Media library under the shared tab on your computer. that way in theory the 360 would be able to access both sets. Because as I currently understand it, you can't link the 360 to more than one computer at a time, which is a bit pointless considering them number of PCs in the average home has significantly grow. My family members each have 1 and I have 3.

Also, in windows 7 they have the network discovery feature you might have to enable, along with backwards comparability if XP being used. All I know is going from XP to Vista/7 has caused many headaches. I guess if you told us what OSes the computers were running it would help for better support

[Geek King]

Vista works depending on your technical level, if you have no idea how a computer works and want to do the basic microsoft tasks, it works. If you know computers you know it runs slower than XP and constantly asks "Are you sure you want to do that" ... yes "Ok what you are doing COULD be dangerous", im aware and accept the risks, "Ok one last time are you sure you wnat to do this " , yes I AM SURE, "Ok, thank you but we don't believe you really know so you can't do what you want, sorry"..... why did I just say I knew what I was doing 4X to be told to piss off?

You know you can turn all the "protect you from yourself" warnings off, right? I'm running Vista on my gaming box, and have it networked to my 360. I've also not noticed this reputed slowness, except in machines that either are not robust enough to run properly (usually not enough RAM), or not being taken care of (file cleanup, periodic defrags, virus scans, improper uninstalls, ect.) To be fair, I have not used Vista in a business environment, only small home networks.

[Fire_on_High]

I gotta agree with Geek King here. I got annoyed and turned that crap off in the first few days, and for what I use the machine for (dedicated gaming and movie box) it's quite sprightly.

Truth be told I think I've only found one task I can't figure out how to do just as easily as previous versions, and that was because they completely changed how it works now.

[Naaman]

I gotta agree with Geek King here. I got annoyed and turned that crap off in the first few days, and for what I use the machine for (dedicated gaming and movie box) it's quite sprightly.

Truth be told I think I've only found one task I can't figure out how to do just as easily as previous versions, and that was because they completely changed how it works now.

Same, although I grabbed Tweak UAC (may have been from a recommendation here) which made it a lot more bearable - just the odd "This needs to be run as Administrator, click yes to continue" type message.

The only thing that caused problems was printing to an XP based printer, apparently you needed full PITA mode before it'd let you do that.