·           For Windows Vista and 7, make sure that the network interface that your computer uses to connect to your local network is marked as “Home”.

Ensure you either have guest access enabled and your file shares are marked as readable by everyone, or that you have your folders shared by a specific user account that you can enter on your Boxee Box.

In your networking settings, make sure that file sharing is enabled; this should be set by default if your network interface is set to home, but it may be disabled by accident.

If possible, browse your network using Explorer (open a Windows Explorer pane, go to the lower left corner and select Network, then choose your workgroup - which is probably 'WORKGROUP' or 'MSHOME' - make sure your machine shows up there).

·           For Windows XP, make sure you either have a firewall exception that covers file sharing, or that you have the firewall disabled. The inbox firewall for Windows XP SP2 and SP3 has a simple configuration for this, as do most third party firewall applications.

·         For Mac OSX, your media needs to be shared via SMB. Go to System Preferences>Sharing>File Sharing. Make sure this is enabled, and tick the “Share files and folders using SMB (Windows)” box.

·         For Linux, you need to have a netbios name set for your machine (typically in /etc/smb.conf or /etc/samba/smb.conf). Also your shares need to be set as browsable.

Make sure the nmbd (netbios name resolution, this is part of samba) is running on your server.

If possible, validate that you can access the shares from another machine.

Ensure that either a) your shares are marked as guest accessible, or b) your shares are accessible by a user account that you can enter on your Boxee Box.