Hello, I have all my media (movies, music) located on several shared networked drive that are mounted on an XP machine. I have no problem browsing these folders using MCE 2005 and playing video over wireless network (be it G or N). I got a brand new Vista machine and when attempting to browse these folders, the system seem to take a lot of time to generate the thumbnails (all my movie files do have corresponding .jpg located into the same folder) and if there is too much files the system would just lock. I have read in an other forum about rebuilding the library from WMP and did so. I am able to watch movies from WMP with no issue, even though the movie takes time to start. but this did not fix any of my issues with browsing the library in Vista Media Center.
Two ideas: First, did you leave the system alone until it was done building the thumbnail cache? Once that's done, it should speed things up in the future (thumbnail cache only needs to be built once.) Second, it's possible that there are one (or more) files that it just doesn't like. Best way to determine that is to move everything out of that directory (on the server - yes, I know that this might suck), and start adding them back in a few (say, 5) at a time, checking operation as you go. When you get to a batch that seems to make Media Center hang, take those back out, and add them back in one at a time until you find the one(s) that make MC puke.
HTH, Chris[If this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as Answer" or "Helpful" button at the top of this message. By marking a post as Answered, or Helpful you help others find the answer faster.]
