I’m not sure when this happened but all of a sudden our Xbox 360 could no longer connect to the Photo, Video, and Music libraries on our Home Server. No changes that I’m aware of except for maybe the dashboard update.
The error message reads: “Can’t connect. Make sure your have activated this console on your computer”. Unfortunately there is no activation screen on the Home Server. The media libraries have been on and haven’t changed. All of our extenders are working as well.
I tried to troubleshoot this on and off for the past couple weeks, thinking it was security related or user accounts but nothing helped. Finally I found KB article 939217 at Microsoft. It provided the easiest suggestion, so easy in fact that I overlooked it. Simply go to the Home Server, disable media sharing and then re-enable media sharing.
Sounds stupid right? It worked! I kick myself for not thinking of it sooner, but why did it all of a sudden stop working with the Xbox but everything else was connecting OK?
There is actually a cause for this issue that I was unaware of. Media sharing in Home Server has a limit of 10 devices! So if you hit that limit by adding and removing devices on your network the only way to clear out the old devices on the Home Server is to stop and start media sharing. Who knew!?
Posted by techstauf4 
