I've been struggling over that past little while to get recording on a network share working and I’ve finally got it nailed. I’ve no idea if this will work for you but it doesn’t involve going into group policy or anything. I’ve tried this both on a domain and using a workgroup and using a windows 2003 server and another media center pc as the server.
You must have a gigabit network for this to work. A 100 mbs network won’t cut it and forget about wireless. If you’re recording two shows and fast forwarding another the network utilization can hit 25-30% on my gigabit network. This is standard def, I’ve no idea about HD.
The first thing is to get the media receiver and scheduler service access to the network share. As many people have pointed out they use the local system account by default. The key to doing it without introducing security holes is to change this account. Create administrator accounts on the media center pc and on the server with the exact same name and password. If you’re on a domain it just has to be a domain user. Make sure this user can access the share from the media center pc without windows prompting for security credentials.
First make sure media center isn’t running. Go to the control panel, administrative tools, services. Find the media center receiver service. Right click on it and select properties. Set it to start manually. Click on the log on tab. Change the account radio button to “this account”, enter the one that exists on both machines and input the password. Click ok. Repeat for the scheduler service. (I’ve no idea if you have to all this for both services and I’m not about to find out!)
The receiver service will reset the recording path to the default if it can’t access the network share, so the next step is to keep it pointing to the network share. Create a reg file in your root called RemoteRecord.reg with the following contents, changing the server and path to whatever you’re using. Make sure you double up the back-slashes. Start -> Run -> notepad c:\RemoteRecord.reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording]
"RecordPath"="\\\\server\\path"
You should also add in the path in the watched folder value in the same location, but it doesn’t seem to reset that so I’ll keep it out of this reg file since MULT_SZ values make reg files messy.
Now stop the ehtray.exe process from starting automatically. Remove it from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run Also make sure you aren’t starting media center automatically. Make sure you’re set to logon on automatically (using autologon from www.sysinternals.com is my suggestion). Finally copy the following into startupmce.cmd your startup folder. Start -> run -> notepad c:\documents and Settings\your username\start Menu\Programs\startup\startupmce.cmd
net stop ehRecvr
net stop ehSched
regedit /s c:\RemoteRecord.reg
ping server
start c:\windows\ehome\ehtray
net start ehRecvr
net start ehSched
ping server
start c:\windows\ehome\ehshell
I’ve got the pings in there to make sure the network stack is going before things start up.
Phew! It’s quite a handful but believe me you won’t believe how much quieter your media pc will become without all those hard drives!
Good luck.