Popcorn Hour and Windows 7

To watch any video on my TV I use networked media tank (NMT) called Popcorn Hour. It does not make any sound (I did not install HDD in it) and it can access any shared resource across the network.

But recently I faced one serious problem - I upgraded to Windows 7 on one of my PCs (which btw have the largest storage space in my apartment) and I was not able to connect to it with my NMT. So I started to look for solutions.

Turned out that this problem is widely known and discussed, but usually it is solved somehow...easier than in my case, so I think that edition of Windows 7 matters in this case. (in my case it's Windows 7 Ultimate Edition)

After some investigation turned out that the exact solution for my problem is to disable this setting in Local security policy: "Restrict anonymous access to Named Pipes and Shares"

To do that you should go to "Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Local Security Policy/Local Policies/Security Options/Network Access: Restrict anonymous access to Named Pipes and Shares" and set it to Disabled.

Warning: Changing that setting could compromise security of your PC, so if your PC is not inside some private home network, than you should not do that change.

Also if you still cannot access your PC from NMT (or any other linux-based device), then probably this will help: http://anime.aoselectronics.com/wordpress/how-to-access-windows-7-shares-from-network_181/

Ignore previous post about WPF

If you read my previous post, than you probably know that I no longer work on WPF.

But right now that is not true anymore. First of all I do huge amount of work on Silverlight, and it's quite close to WPF.

Also I work on several projects on my own when I have some spare time. Actually I do not have any spare time so I do all the work instead of having a decent sleep or any kind of rest. But soon you will be able to see result of my work - I am going to get the product to the market in a month or two and those who read this blog will get the application for free or almost for free :) I'll give it some more thinking.

Also I would like to mention that Silverlight is much worse than WPF in any way - performance for the end user sucks as much as possible performance of developer :)