Help! Still trying to get my Xbox 360 to play nice with my PC

I am in the same boat. I have gotten as far as where my Xbox 360 can see my computer and connect to it, but there is never anything there, even though I have gone into the library on Media Player 11 and shared. I'm curious to the responses you get.

You need an Ethernet hub and two extra ethernet cables. (You'll need one cable from the hub to the router, and one each for the PC and the XBox.) An "Ethernet switch" is the same thing as a hub, but with better performance. They used to cost a lot more, but not so much these days.

Your post implies that you have a broadband router, which probably (if its like most consumer routers I've worked with) has an integrated 4-port switch, or better. The simplest, most fool-proof way to get your PC in ethernet communication with your xbox is to connect both your PC and your xbox via patch cables to the ports on your router. I know nothing about the xbox's network setup, but I imagine if you can get them talking to eachother over wired ethernet, it rules out a lot of 802.11whatever foibles.

First of all, uninstall any 3rd party music sharing software. (Like TVersity which was recommended in your previous question.) as well as any other media streaming software which may intefere. Assuming you have XP, you'll need Windows Media Player 11 and enable Media Sharing, and allow your Xbox 360 access to your library. On your Xbox 360, you go to media->music->computer->windows-based pc, then select your computer. If you have XP MCE, and want to use the Xbox 360 as an extender to play TV/Music, etc, you'll need Rollup 2 and http://www.xbox.com/en-US/pcsetup/alldownloads.htm (xbox.com)

I've noticed that the 360 can not see any music that isn't local to the machine sharing it; I have all my music on a NAS device, so nothing is shareable. There are several discussions I've seen that suggest that part of the issue lies in authentication difficulties because the service doing the sharing doesn't have the same credentials as the windows account you setup the sharing with, nor even the same network drive letters defined.

I just got an Xbox 360 too, and I was able to connect to my PC very easily by using a Linksys router. My PC is connected to the router and so is the 360. The next step was to install the Zune software on my PC. Available here: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/pcsetup/alldownloads.htm After the install the software did a scan of my connected hard drives and found my Mp3 collections. After that, everything worked fine - with the notable exception of not being able to stream any music that I ripped using iTunes (or music bought from the iTunes store). For those songs I needed to re-rip the CD's - this time using MusicMatch - and everything worked fine. As a quick side note - I played Gears of War while AC/DC's Hells Bells streamed through the 360 from my PC - it was sublime.