Network HDD and the Xbox 360 Problems - Please HELP??????!!?!?!

Here is my problem.

I had all of my media files (ie pics, video, music) on my laptop pc and wanted to play them on my xbox 360. And I was able to do it following microsoft xbox website and windows media player with the media extender.

But, I recently bought a WD My book World Edition (which is connected to my router via ethernet cable), I tranferred all of my files to the WD My Book and I can now stream them on my laptop through windows media player or whatever program I want. I can also read/edit any and all word files or anything like that.

Now I want to be able to play all my media files from the networked HDD on the xbox 360.
What I thought I could do was add all the files into the windows media player on my pc from the networked HDD and tell the player to share my files with the xbox 360 just like I did before.

So i added them and I can play them on the pc but when i turn on my xbox console and try to bring them up, it says that no files are found. Though, the xbox says i'm connected to the pc and if I transfer a file to my pc from the networked HDD and add that file to the windows media player (from my HDD of my pc) the xbox will recognize that file and play/view it.

I don't know what to do. Is there a way to set up my xbox to recognize the WD My book as a separate system and just connect directly to the HDD? or is there something i need to do for the xbox to recognize the files as coming from my pc.

(I did have a second laptop pc, before it died on me, that I also had connected to my network. The xbox recognized that laptop too...I had all of my files on that pc at first and directly them through my current pc's windows media player, and then onto the xbox) that is until it died and I bought the networking HDD.

My set up

(Router) (System connected to router)

Linksys WRT54G ----------- my pc (wired/ or wireless)
----------- xbox 360 (wired)
----------- WD My book HDD (wired)

side note*

The linksys advisor software I use to control my network recognizes my pc, the xbox, and the HDD all as separate systems.

I'm don't really have advanced knowledge of computers and networking but enough to understand most things, but a dumbed down set of instructions never hurts.

Thanks
Paul

That's not quite true.

There are instructions for making the network drive visible to the Xbox via Windows XP/Media Player 11 here:


http://www.microsoft.com/windows/w [...] spx#q20_17



That said, once you do this the Xbox 360 still doesn't seem to want to play the content even though it will "see" the drive content and let you explore around it.

It's not an issue with Xbox 360 media playing capability. I know because if you move a movie or music file from the network drive on to the XP machine, and *then* try to play it on the Xbox console thru MP11, it works just fine.

There's something about direct accessing the network drive that the Xbox doesn't like (it might be a drive format issue).

It's frustrating because the newer MyBook World's have a media server built-in that looks pretty funky. I can't see any technical reason why they couldn't provide a firmware update to hand on that capability...but then that wouldn't generate new drive sales.