This is my setup in my front room:


I download things.....like Movies (legal ) through my main pc, and want to play them through the media pc. Can I set up a network somehow so I can put them in a Shared folder on the main pc, and they appear in the same Shared folder on the media pc??? How to I do it, as Ive never set networks up before.

The main is running XP Pro, and the media one is running Vista Ultimate.

Also, dont know if this is possible, but I have it set up so when I turn the media pc on, Window Media Centre starts up, and is in the main menu screen for that. Is there a way I can make it load showing whats in the Shared folder??

Cheers

You saying you want to (1) copy stuff over to the mc or just have a (2)shared folder?

Im bored so Ill do both ways:

1) To auto-copy stuff across the LAN get Cobian Backup (google it) and do a incremental backup and schedule it daily or whatever.

2) You just need to share the folder on mainPC and know the unc path (i.e. \\mainpc\shared so you can have a shortcut on the MC (map it right-click, "My Computer", "map network drive").

Technically you dont need to share it to get acess if youve got admin account on mainpc - just do \\mainpc\shared$

QuoteAlso, dont know if this is possible, but I have it set up so when I turn the media pc on, Window Media Centre starts up, and is in the main menu screen for that. Is there a way I can make it load showing whats in the Shared folder??

Dunno, but you could auto-open the folder in explorer easy enough. Open notepad and type this line in:

start \\mainPC\shared

Save it as "shared.bat" and put it in the startup folder, or whatever Vista has.

Have a look on the support pages, ms supporty pages are quite good a lot of the time.

Think number 1 actually the way you describe it!

Ill have a play when I wake up at dinner time after ive slept as im at work now. When I install that program, and run it, in theory it should on boot up transfer all new downloaded files on to the MC to a specified folder?

Will have a read of the support pages actually, didnt think to look there  :whoops:

Cheers for the help