Media sharing

Windows supports the UPnP protocol.

This is the industry standard to share media over a network.

If you run Vista you can play the media on other devices (UPnP servers) and these devices can play the content on the Vista box.

If you run XP you can't play the media on other devices but they can play the content on XP.

In case of XP you probably have to enable UPnP first.

In WMP put the Media Sharing on.

In the navigation pane, all media servers are listed just like the standard library.

You can see all the media servers in your network environment.

Media sharing not working

Media sharing is not file sharing. It is streaming AV using UPnP

A bit more about trouble shooting streaming AV.