jcolo said: To include network shares into the TouchSmart music library, create a symbolic directory link in a folder of your library list of folders.  For example, "Public Music" is in my list.  Open a command window (run as administrator) and change directory to "C:\Users\Public\Music".   Then execute the command:      mklink /d rmusic "\\server\music" Where \\server\music is the network share, and rmusic is now the symbolic directory link that points to it ( in the Public Music folder ).   Go into TouchSmart and it will now include all of your remote music directly into the music library. ... on the question of hiding the DirecTV2PC Media Servers, I created an IP filter list in the Windows 7 MMC to block the source addresses of my DirecTV boxes (which have static IP addresses).   

Bravo- Very creative solutions and thank you for posting something truly useful. It did not occur to me to get "old skool" with the solution, e.g symbolic links / firewall settings.  I suppose I've gotten too soft being spoiled by Windows Media Centers' inclusion of mapped drives (as well as just about every other media center interface... XBMC, XLobby, etc etc..  ;p 

Why HP omitted showing mapped drives as a local resource on purpose is beyond me. That is the point of mapped drives. I typically have the Windows firewall turned off on all LAN computers- Using a Juniper SSG for my perimeter firewall.

Can you clarify how you renamed the albums? Did you simply change the folder and/or file names of your albums / music files or did you use an mp3 tag editor to change the artist / album info on each music file? Keep in mind that the "album" and "artist" views use the tag info inside each music file to create the view.

Honestly I don't know as I have not implemented the mklink fix yet. It wouldn't surprise me if the TS was doing some sort of information caching, have you tried closing / re-opening the TS app to see if that refreshes it?

jcolo said: To include network shares into the TouchSmart music library, create a symbolic directory link in a folder of your library list of folders.  For example, "Public Music" is in my list.  Open a command window (run as administrator) and change directory to "C:\Users\Public\Music".   Then execute the command:      mklink /d rmusic "\\server\music" Where \\server\music is the network share, and rmusic is now the symbolic directory link that points to it ( in the Public Music folder ).   Go into TouchSmart and it will now include all of your remote music directly into the music library. ... on the question of hiding the DirecTV2PC Media Servers, I created an IP filter list in the Windows 7 MMC to block the source addresses of my DirecTV boxes (which have static IP addresses).   

I wanted to add that this method also works for the Photos and Videos TouchSmart apps. You'll have to first create separate symbolic links to your network stored videos and photos, same as you did above for your network music share, and then go into TS Photo settings and TS Video settings menu. Now select the "rphotos" and "rvideos" links that you created (or whatever you named them), then they will show up in the native TS libraries as if they were on the local computer.

Nice work-around.  HP is lame for not allowing network storage devices and regular mapped drives to be included in the TS default folder selection settings!!!!