Emby on Server 2012 can't see network shares from Windows 7

[computerprep 148]

So I'm beginning to migrate my Emby Server off my desktop environment and into a rack server environment.

 

I'm virtualizing my server, and I have too many externals to pass them all through to the Windows VM so (until my rackmount NAS comes in) I'm leaving my media shares open on the Windows 7 desktop and am able to access them through explorer on the R710 running Server 2012.

 

The problem is, the webGUI for Emby can't find any network folders. Again, these folders are visible through Windows Explorer, but not through the Emby setup. I'm attempting to navigate to one of these media shares to restore my backed up configuration. Once I can do that, and the other media shares are visible, I should be golden.

 

Any ideas?

[Luke 42086]

Hi, try typing in the path manually.

[computerprep 148]

Solution here (so far) for future users finding this problem...

There are some services that were not enabled by default in Server 2012 Datacenter that are dependencies for Network Discovery to actually work. They are DNS Client, Function Discovery Resource Publication, SSDP Discovery, and UPnP Device Host. For me, three of these were stopped, and two of those were actually disabled.

 

This enabled Network Discovery to its fullest extent, allowing Chrome to see the folders that Explorer was showing me.

[computerprep 148]

@@Luke, another question related to this migration... can I copy my metadata folder from old PC to new server, into the folder I've specified in my new settings? Will it just work, or does that have to be built by the new machine to really use it.

 

Searched around and couldn't find this particular topic covered. My apologies if there's a duplicate somewhere.

Edited September 24, 2017 by computerprep

[Luke 42086]

Some things will work but others will not, it just depends on if the library item ids are the same as the old server. for that to happen all the library paths will need to be exactly the same.