Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Sharing folders from an external drive with PC Share Manager

Tested on Windows Vista and Samsung BD-C6500 and it works flawlessly.

I have taken the time to compile this tutorial because I was pulling my hair out trying to share an external drive through PC Share Manager and finally figured it out. I'm hoping to help you all avoid that.


1. Open command prompt as administrator

Click on "Start", "All Programs", "Accessories", then right click on "Command Prompt" and click on "Run As Administrator"

Accept any warnings and grant permission


2. Open up "My Computer" and see what drive letter is assigned to your external drive. This works for both USB flash drives and external USB Hard Drives.

If your drive is assigned letter F:, then type the following in Command Prompt window and hit enter:

mklink /d c:samsungmovies f:shared

Note: You will need to replace "samsungmovies" with whatever you want your folder to be named and you will also need to replace "shared" to whatever folder your media files are stored in.

For example:
If your external drive is letter "F:" and your media files are in a folder called movies in the root of "F:", then you would type this into command prompt instead:

mklink /d c:samsungmovies f:movies

Once this is done and you hit enter, you will see a message that says Symbolic Link Created

Now close Command Prompt Window

3. Now, open up PC Share Manager and look for your newly shared folder under "Computer", "Local Disk (C:)"
In this case, it would be "samsungmovies" but you can make this whatever you want as I mentioned in the above Note


4. Now, just share that folder like you would share any of the other folders and you?re good to go. Remember to refresh DB or click on Set Changed State in order for changes to take effect.

I hope this helps.
Good luck all.

Reply 1 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I just found an easier way to do this and it will probably work for all windows versions. I tried this on vista and xp and it works.

Go to the directory where PC Share Manager is intalled

On XP it is
C:Program FilesSamsungSamsung PC Share Manager

Double click the file configinfo.ini to open it for editing and under the Shared Folders section, add a new line with the path to the folder on the external drive .

In my case I had to add
E:Movies

Save the ini file and close it. Then open PC Share Manager and the folder on the external drive will be shared already. Just update the DB by clicking the Set Changed State button and check your TV or Blu Ray player and the folder is there with all the media files in it. Files play nice.

Reply 2 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I can get to C:Windowssystem32 but can't go further. I am running Vista Home Basic. the PC share disconnect problem is driving my crazy. My skills are intermediate. Any help will be appreciated. I can get my music and photos to show but the "device disconnect" has got the better of me.

Reply 3 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Why are you going to C:windowssystem32?

Reply 4 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

that's what I get when I go to DOS command prompt. How would you get to the above mentioned configinfo.ini file?

Reply 5 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Either just navigate to the location in explorer via my computer and then the c drive or type:

cd "C:Program FilesSamsungSamsung PC Share Manager"

You need the quotes as it has spaces in it.

Reply 6 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Dont use dos for the configinfo file. You need to navigate to the folder where pc share manager is installed then edit the configinfo.ini file.

Reply 7 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Diligent1,

Considering the time you put into this, and the success that some other users were noting, I'd like to pin this topic to help other users.

I appreciate you taking the time to do this, and I think there are people who could benefit from this.

If you'd rather not, I can request it be unpinned. But it caught my attention, and this is really great stuff. Thanks for helping others in the forum.

--HDTech

Reply 8 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

No problem at all. Thats what the forum is for. You can with it what you want.

Reply 9 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I want add a very important note as to avoid any confusion. These solutions will not work if you have your external drive hooked up to a usb port directly on a router or if it is shared as a network drive. External drives must be connected to usb port on your pc that is running PC Share. If its hooked to a usb port on a router or shared as a network drive, it is a NAS and it wont work.

Reply 10 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Diligent1: Thank you for your post. I've been hunting around for an answer as to why I can't get any data living on a NAS or other networked drives to display while I have no trouble displaying data that lives on the c: drive of the machine PC Share is installed on. Just to be certain, are you saying there is no way to display data from a NAS share or from other networked drives? (I'm using my BD-C6900 player as the networked device) Thanks

Reply 11 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Use mezzmo instead of pc share manager and it will work. Mezzmo is a bit harder to setup but once it is setup, it works flawlessly with Network drives.

Reply 12 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Your other option is to connect your drive to usb port on your pc and then follow one of the methods at beginning of this thread to be able to use pc share manager.

Reply 13 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Thank you, I'll try it both ways

Reply 14 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Mezzmo was a spectacular failure. It would not recognize MPEG Movie Clip files, it streamed AVCHD files way too jerky (not a surprise) and I found the interface confusing because it gave no indication of status (for example instead of telling me that the video format is not recognized, it just sat there so I couldn't tell if it was working on it or it blew up). The 50 picture limit for playlists is also a problem for me.

The configini fix on the other hand worked flawlessly, thanks again

Reply 15 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Its good something worked for you. I had no probs with mezzmo, but then again I was only using avi and mkv.

Reply 16 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I would have expected better! All PC Share Manager does is put a poorly functioning piece of software on your PC that does not offer any functionality for sharing the files between a PC and the Blu Ray player! You can already do this with Windows Media Player sharing and a device that works together with that application. Samsung could have done much better by incorporating that into their device rather than a poorly written piece of software.

For example, the only thing PC Share Manager does is allow a user to access files on another PC. However, you cannot search or you cannot create or play playlists. I've had devices that have worked flawlessly with the Windows Media sharing and have had the full functionality of searching by genre, artist, album, etc. The ability to create playlists is not in this program, nor is the ablity to shuffle music.

I would suggest that Samsung dump PC Share Manager in favor of a software package that works with already available systems and software. Or, add functionality such as searching and playlist support so the DVD player can be an extension of a home network.

I was very disappointed with this software package as I thought it would give more functionality besides being a basic file manager.

Reply 17 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I have followed your procedure to a T however, is there a step missing? Once I click on "Command Prompt" I am not prompted to click on anything that says "run as administrator". I typed in the command as explained ignoring the aforementioned step and i got a message saying that I "do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation". What am I missing? Any help would be appreciated.I'm using vista, and samsung model bd-c5500c.

Reply 18 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

You have to right click on command prompt and a context menu will come up. Then you left click on run as administrator and then the command prompt will open. If I were you, I would just use the second option instead, where you just edit the configinfo.ini file. It's quicker.

Reply 19 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Tried the other method. Got a message saying "Cannot create the C:Program filesSamsungSAMSUNG PC Share Managerconfiginfo.ini file. Make sure that the path and file name are correct." What gives?

Reply 20 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

It sounds like you may not have permission to edit the file. Are you logged onto the pc under a secondary acct? Do you have admin rights? If the file set as read only? Also, make sure PC Share Manager isnt running in the background when you try this. If it is, you will get a message like that because the file is in use already and you cant edit it if it is already being used.

Reply 21 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

First off...many thnx because both tricks worked but i have another problem...i have a external drive (1.5TB) and i have a folder where i keep all movies different types and format. When i try to share it and then use the option "Set Changed State" i can see the progress bar moving but after a while it stops and give an error "Server update failed. Please restart server" and it keeps going on and on...anyway to surpass that? thnx in advance

Reply 22 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I would post that in a new thread. I haven't had that problem yet so I don't know. Make a new thread. Im sure someone can help you.

Reply 23 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

And don't skip on details. One owner had 1,000+ files in there and well, go figure.

Reply 24 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I have a FreeNAS box that I would like to access. My office computer is running PC Share Manager and Win7. I've mapped the Folders that I would like to access to my office PC, then I S-Linked them using your first step. Both folders show up under my C: drive and I've named them FreeNASMovies and FreeNASTV. Share Manager allows me to place the folders on the shared folder list but the TV shows that there is no media in them. It easily accesses the PC Share Manager and shows the folders but, there is no content in them..

When right clicking them in the Share Manager software and selecting properties, their size shows 0 Byte when in fact they are full of content. Over 375gb each folder. The Movie folder does not contain sub-folders, and the TV folder does.

I'm using a Samsung 6300 series LED. Thanks in advance for any advice..

Reply 25 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Back in post 5 of this thread I mentioned that it dont work with NAS. Exactly what you said is the problem I had too when I had my drive hooked up as NAS. Im not sure why. You need a drive to hook up directly to a usb port on your pc, then it will work. Otherwise, you need to use another server software like Mezzmo or something.

Reply 26 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Sorry I wasn't as thorough with my reading. So, whenever you want to access content, do you drag the media you'd like to view from your NAS to your USB External, then stream?

My fianc?e is addicted to our Boxee Box in the living room and unfortunately that is where all my game systems are. I would much rather utilize the feature of the TV rather than have to buy another Boxee Box. Hopefully in the near future a firmware update will solve the NAS compatibility issue.

Reply 27 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Pretty much thats what youll have to do with th setup you have but I wouldnt bother. If I were you, Id use something other than PC share manager. You can try to share those files through windows media player. That might work for you. I have some problems with certain stuff not showing up through wmp but I have vista. I read about people with win 7 having success though.

Reply 28 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

Dear Dilligent1,
That is a tidy and neat workaround for a rather silly and annoying problem. I made an account just to say thanks.

Reply 29 : Tutorial sharing media on external drives PC Share Manager

I can't get this to work. I have an extrenal 1.5TB external usb drive and after following both ways I get this error when updating the database. "Server stopped abnormally. Please restart server".
Any idea's????