Windows 7 DLNA – Why aren’t all my files listed?

One of the first things I did when I got my new TV was figure out how I can stream all of my movies from my server to the TV. Luckily for me, my TV has DLNA built into it. What’s DLNA? You can read up on details here, but the long and short of it is that it’s a technology that makes it easy to share media across different devices.

Windows 7 has a DLNA server built into it. My LG TV has DNLA built into it. It took all of about 5 min to run through the instructions to get Windows 7 sharing media on my network. But one of the things that I’ve noticed is that new movies put onto the server don’t always show up on my TV’s list of files. I finally figured out today that it’s Windows Media Player that’s doing the indexing of the movie list – you have media player running for the new files to show up!

So, if you ever fire up your DNLA end point and can’t see a file, fire up Media Player on your sharing device and that should solve the problem.

39 thoughts on “Windows 7 DLNA – Why aren’t all my files listed?”

  1. thanks for posting this. I have been trolling the net for the past couple of days trying to figure this out as well. I have the same problem with my Samsung TV.

    did you use Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center to refresh the DLNA files?

    I just launched WMP … CPU time is near max for the last 10mins (maybe due to the large # of files I have??)

    1. Thank you very much Kevin and Marbss. You have made an old man (well…older :) very happy.
      Recently returned from a holiday in Thailand and although all the other picture folders in 2015 and prior years would display on our TV, the Thailand folder would not and it was frustrating the hell out of us as we wanted to show our kids, grandkids, friends etc……until I launched windows media player; clicked ‘pictures’; waited for a while and then the Thailand photos appeared.
      Switched on the TV; media server app. etc. and Bingo…..our Thailand photos are there.
      In a world full of misery, you guys are doing your bit to spread joy and happiness. Well done.

  2. Excellent – this has been driving me crazy for a while now. Samsung BluRay player would sometimes see new media and sometimes not. Just fired up WMPlayer and the missing file have appeared.

    Thanks!

  3. This is how I got past the same issue for Shifta for my andriod phone and XBOX 360.

    In Windows Media Player under "Stream" choose "More streaming options"

    Choose "All Networks" at the top

    Then highlight the device (My Andriod phone came up as 'Unknown device')

    Choose "Customize"

    Then uncheck "Use Default settings"

    and then check "Make all my media avaible to this device."

    I did the same for eveything on the list that said XBOX 360 and it worked like a charm. I went from 61 viewable items to 125!

    Hope this helps

  4. Thanks for the post, I have a new Philips tv and could not understand why my films which had been watched and deleted from my harddrive were still showing up on my TV. I opened media player and clicked on library – videos – all videos. It listed all my movies in alphabetical order. I then went to my TV and hey presto all my current movies are showing.
    This post took me all night to find, there must be plenty of people out there with similar problems.
    Thanks again.

  5. Ok..Im having a similar problem….Im using allshare (and also tried serviio) to stream content from my laptop to my samsung bluray player. All my files show up on the player, but they all appear empty. Ive made sure every sharing option is clicked to share, firewall exceptions made, antivirus turned off (briefly to test) file extensions NOT hidden, restarted the blueray and laptop several times…reinstalled and uninstalled the software several times….uncompressed all my files, etc…Im getting really angry, not being able to figure this out! Every other program on the blueray player works fine, so I dont think thats it. Maybe my laptop is wonky. Ugh. I even cleaned up the registry etc…too, just to be safe!

  6. Thanks for the post but i have movies i bought off the internet and downloaded to my media player and i shows up on my computer and i have tried all of these still not showing up. If u know of a solution please respond!

  7. Thank you for that tip about Window's Media Player indexing, have been chasing my tail for several days, trying to sort out that problem, open WMP and all is visable now. Thanks again.

  8. Pingback: Windows 7 DLNA 沒有顯示完整的檔案 | AmJet IT Blog
  9. Great article. I still have a problem. My android tab can access the win7 dlna server. On the win7 in my music library are two folders shared. One is local music, the other one is \otherservermusic
    The local one can be browsed with the tablet. the latter does not show up. Does anyone know why? Thx in advance.

  10. Thanks for the tips, all! Solved my invisible media issues instantly.

    Just one question, in case anyone is still following this article:

    Anyone know why the videos in the library play continuously via DLNA (Win 7 laptop server and Sony BD S390 for playback) instead of stopping at the end of the selected video? Can’t seem to find a setting to control this behavior.

  11. Thank you. Running Windows Media Player on my server is the key. Sony support was no help at all. All my files are now available when I want them instead of waiting for them to mysteriously show up.

  12. This sounds similar to my problem but still cant fix it. Would appreciate any help!!

    I have a hard drive plugged into my router on the network – accessing all the files from my comp works completley fine!

    However, when trying to view folders/files via DLNA on my LG TV not everything shows up & there is no consistency at all on each attempt which folders/files arent visible.

    How can I fix this?

    1. Hi Matthew, do you (like myself) have a DLINK router DIR-857 ?
      It seems (and the issue may not only pertain to this model of mine) according to this post here:
      (entry of July 18, 2012): http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=49974.0)
      that .."A DLNA certified device should list all DLNA supported format files (MP3, MP4, eg.) and just ingore all the other format files ( MKV, RMVB, eg.). But when 857 has detected a unsupported file, it will immediately stop indexing anything and ingroe every rest file, regardless of what format they are. So you should only use samba until d-link fix this."
      and this may cause only some of the files showing up (ie. until the indexer went broke by a unknown format).
      I'm anxious to get it fixed too.

  13. Thank you! I just got a smart tv a couple of weeks ago and was having this same problem. I never open wmp since I usl VLC instead, so the dlna library was never updating.

  14. I just want to share an issue I had (and how to solve it). Trying to use any DLNA client (VLC, Media Player, XBMC) with my Panasonic PVR (a DMR-BWT720).

    I had a laptop working properly but a new PC and an even newer Laptop would see the PVR but not list recordings. I checked everything… lots of internet searches for issues of OS compatibility (as the three ran Vista, Win7 and Win8 respectively) and configuration, Router issues, PVR issues, DLNA Client bugs. In fact, mostly what I found were comments on how it "just worked".

    It turned out to be my own fault… When I set up the PVR I had chosen to configure devices manually (the alternative being automatic)… then I forgot all about it so I had not added the two new computers.

    Once I found it, the fix was just a matter of enabling each MAC address listed on the PVR's device setup screen and it all started working (once I had worked out that "Enable" on the screen meant the state "Enabled" and was not an instruction)!

    Anyway, as I couldn't find any indication of this sort of mistake in all my searches I thought it might be worth posting… just in case this sort of problem is driving anyone else as mad as it drove me.

    Not all problems are deeply techy!

  15. Rebuilding the WMP dbase and enabling "make all media available" solved the missing files for both my WD TV Live and my Micca EP600 media players. Thank you for posting this.

  16. Thanks so much for solving this issue, I have been struggeling with for months. As I also use VLC player, I never turned on Media Player – hence the updates where only done sporadic. It solved the steaming between my iMac (with WIn 6 / 64) and my SONY Bravia 46 TV.

  17. I was not unable to view edited photos on my Panasonic TV DLNA. Panasonic support told me that is was a design feature which did not make any sense. Launching Windows Media Player on my desktop computer resolved this problem, Great idea on this post.

  18. Any way to make WMP update the index immediately after a file is added even when it's not running?

  19. yes! Winston C's post fixed the intermittent problem of why some files would show up on my TV and some wouldn't. thanks!

  20. Thanks for the tip! Works Great. However, when displaying photos from my PC to my Samsung Smart TV, I do not understand the order chosen. It is not in time order so the photos are out of sequence. I have changed the times of the files but they are still displayed out of sequence, that is not time ordered. And they are not alphabetical. Does anyone know what is going on and how to display the photos in a folder in time sequence?

  21. Pingback: DLNA-Client zeigt neue Dateien nicht sofort an
  22. Hi, I spent the last 4 hours trying to figure out why this was suddenly happening to me and this is one of the pages I landed on from a google search.
    I'm just writing to say that nothing on any page I encountered solved the problem and I'm here posting the solution to MY problem so anyone who lands here like I did can see it.

    Check the permissions (Properties » Security tab) on a file that's being shared and that you can actually see on the media server. You'll notice there's permissions for group called HomeUsers. Check if the other files that aren't being shared have the same permissions on them. If not, just add it. Simple as that.

  23. Thanks for the post, I actually have a brand new Philips tv and will not perceive why my films that had been watched and deleted from my hard drive were still appearance on my TV. I opened media player and clicked on library videos all videos. It listed all my movies in alphabetical order. I then visited my TV and hey fast all my current movies are showing.
    This post took American state all night to search out there should be many individuals out there with similar issues.
    Thanks once more.
    smart android box

  24. Pingback: dlna | Info Menarik
  25. Great Post!

    My problems were with a Window10 PC where Albums were disappearing from the list that the DLNA server shown to other devices. I could see the albums in explorer, but the Album name and track names were prefixed with 01.

    From this article I learnt that a rebuild of the library would be needed. What I did was copy all of my music to an external drive. Then start WMP and check that nothing was showing. Then copy them all back with WMP running in the background.

    Result – all albums now showing! Album and track names correct.

  26. I’m sure that the OP won’t see this, but I have to submit a comment. Over the years of googling for answers to problems, there’s been only a few that are “priceless.” This is one of them. And, I haven’t found any other pages that mention this.
    I’ve been frustrated with trying to get my videos to play on my TVs. I’ve been using a USB, but one of the TVs will accept photos only on the USB. And, the HDMI on my laptop seems to be useless.
    Anywho, this was the solution – many, many tanks!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *