After a few weeks of not using it, I decided to play some music from my Xbox 360 using the Media Extender feature. I keep my music on my laptop and run it from the Media Center of Vista Home Premium to my 360 and out the 6 speaker system. However, after I fired up the Media Center in the 360, connected to the laptop, selected music and clicked on music library, nothing happened. After a while, I got an error message saying that the connection was lost. Despite trying several more times, I got the same result.

So naturally I began to troubleshoot this. I shut down and restarted both devices but only achieved the same result. I deleted the setup connection from the 360, re-set up, again, same result. Even turning off the firewall in my laptop gave me no luck. Okay.  It was time to stop guessing and start looking.

Checking over the computer’s system log, I found a somewhat obscure error. Even with clicking on the link to check for help online, I find no particularly helpful data. By Googling the error, I stumbled upon a developer application that has been used to solve somewhat similar problems.  Aha!  Naturally I downloaded and installed this tool, and started running it to repair my file and registry permissions.

At the end of my adventure I restarted my computer and the 360¦and¦VOILA! I can access the music library in my laptop from the 360 extender again. Playing music as I write this, I’m happy I was once again able to solve yet another computer-related issue.

Even something perplexing as this can be handled when one knows where to look “ or knows who to have look for them.  So if you have ever run into something similar, drop me a line and we’ll tackle it together.