Playon, Junctions, problems

[lucasbuck]

I was having a problem with Tubecore. It was playing all my netflix videos and still showing the web controls at the bottom (like you were watching in a browser, but not full screen). I ended up reinstalling Tubecore, that didn't work, so reinstalled Playon which did.

Unfortunately it broke my junction I made with the Playon junction tool. I went to rerun it, and get this error: The remote
server returned an error (400) Bad Request.

I tried it on another computer with the same error. It seems to have a problem downloading the junction program itself. Anyways, I emailed Playon and they suggested just doing it by hand (just using junction, not their frontend). Can anyone explain how to do this specifically? Like, what the command line would be. I don't want to mess something up.

(Also, any idea what would have tripped playon in the first place to stop playing in full screen?)

[barnabas1969]

Open a command window as administrator, with elevated privileges. The command is:

mklink /J <LinkName> <TargetDirectory>

You need to move the original directory first. For example, if you move C:\ProgramData\MediaMall to E:\ProgramData\MediaMall, then the commands would be:

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C:
cd ProgramData
mklink /J MediaMall E:\ProgramData\MediaMall

As for why your PlayOn server started having a problem, I can't tell you. But your explanation of the problem with the junction tool doesn't make sense. My guess would be that you already have a junction at C:\ProgramData\MediaMall.

Try opening a command window, and navigating to C:\ProgramData. Do a "dir" command. Look at the MediaMall directory. Does it look like this:

Code: Select all

03/22/2011  09:00 PM    <JUNCTION>     MediaMall [E:\ProgramData\MediaMall]

Note the "<JUNCTION>" on that line. If it says that, then it's already a junction.

[lucasbuck]

No, it's <DIR>, not junction. I don't think it's a problem with playon, I think it's a problem with junction helper. The progress bar stops just a bit into it at the 'downloading junction' with that bad request error. I tried the junction helper on a different computer and it did the same thing. Maybe the address where junction helper is trying to download junction itself has changed?

Before I created e:\temporary\playon temp <-- then inside it junction helper would create .PlayOn

It's still doing that part, creating .PlayOn, but then giving me the (400) bad request error when downloading junction. But I looked, and it never made programdata on E:. So I'm not exactly clear. Do I need to move the C: programdata\mediamall to E:? What's the .PlayOn that it creates?

Oh, and in case anyone else hits it, the controls showing up is a PlayOn glitch they said would be fixed in a later release.

[barnabas1969]

So, you're trying to download the junction helper again? Why not just use the one you downloaded before? It's just an executable program. All you should have to do is find the one you downloaded last time and run it.

If you didn't save a copy of the program, you can do it manually.

No, you don't move ProgramData. That would be a big problem for other programs. You just move the MediaMall directory that is UNDER ProgramData. For example, if you move it to "E:\temporary\MediaMall" Then, you open a command window (DOS prompt) and change directory to C:\ProgramData. Once you're there, you'll type the following command:

mklink /J MediaMall E:\temporary\MediaMall

Make sure to stop Playon before you move the directory, and start it after you create the junction.

[lucasbuck]

I didn't have my original, so I redownloaded it. It downloads fine. What I was saying is I think when you run helper, it goes to the MS site and downloads junction. That seems to be where it's failing. Helper runs, I enter the folder where to move it to, then tell it to apply (or whatever). It says it's downloading junction, then says remote server returned an error (400) Bad Request.

I was thinking maybe where ever helper is point to to grab the junction program is outdated. I can't think of why it would fail on two different computers. Maybe if someone else tries it they can let me know if I'm nuts, or if something changed.

Thanks for explaining how to do it manually though. Out of curiosity, does helper just rename it .PlayOn? I didn't know why I ended up with a .PlayOn folder on E: before rather than MediaMall.

[barnabas1969]

I don't know about the ".PlayOn" folder. Never noticed that. If you ran it on another PC that did not have PlayOn installed, then it would definitely fail.