Quote:
the receiver continually displays the 'Searching for music server' message


When it eventually times out and gives a failure screen (a minute or two after power up), what IP address does it say it's got? If it's 169.254.x.x, then the problem is that it's not getting a DHCP address from the internet router.

Quote:
And, the hub I used is an old 3com hub I borrowed from my office.

My Rio Receiver is currently running, daisy chained into into an old 3com hub, too. So that was a good start. Assuming it's a 10-megabit hub instead of an autosensing 10/100, that's the right thing to try. There's a possibility of multiple simultaneous problems, though, so just because it didn't fix it on the first try, keep the old hub around.

Quote:
I've also disabled both the router's firewall and the XP firewall with no luck.


Yeah, the router's firewall wouldn't make a difference (that's only firewalling the internet), but XP's firewall definitely would make a difference. No matter what happens, you have to open up ports on the firewall to get the receiver to work, so make sure to do that.

Any chance you've turned on Internet Connection Sharing on that PC? What about third-party virus protection or firewall software that might be blocking the Rio server software from talking to the networks?

Quote:
And, I also attempted to shut off and restart the receiver itself many times.


As was said elsewhere in this thread, a single press on the power button on the front of the receiver only puts it into sleep mode. To make it truly reboot, you have to either pull its plug, or mash its power button a few times really fast. So definitely try that.

I'd suggest the next two things to try:

- As a diagnostic step, try this: Poke the holes in the XP firewall as linked above. Actually, for this test, just disable the XP firewall altogether. Then take that 3com hub and plug both the PC and the receiver straight into it. Leave the internet router out of the equation for now. Both devices will time out looking for a DHCP server, then fail-over to "169.254.x.x" addresses, and if all the connections are working, they should be able to talk to each other.

- If that diagnostic *works*, then it's time to start looking closely at the logs on that internet router to see what addresses it's giving out, look and see if it's seeing the receiver at all, if it's giving it a DHCP address at all, etc.

_________________________
Tony Fabris