Running win xp on pent 4 with 1 GB of DDR ram which has NO problems. The Rio Receiver has a problem in all three configurations that I hooked it up in:

1) Hooked up the unit using direct cable to 3com ethernet card - NO music server found - DO I NEED A CROSSOVER ETHERNET CABLE? ( and yes i made my card 10mb half duplex restarted it one thousand times)

2) Hooked thru SMC Barricade router and configured to allow all ports open. The device connects and then the device locks up continuing to play music but allowing no user input (the note changes from blue to red) P.S. nice of rio to tell us which ports need to be opened 21075,111 (I had to find these atypical ports on a linux hacking page). My device would not connect at all until I opened these ports on the router.

3) Hooked up thru Linksys 5 port 10/100 switch (NO ROUTER) connects fine on first initialization but then within five minutes locks up while continuing to play music.(display is frozen, volume can NOT be adjusted) Similar to router problem

AGAIN PLEASE NOTE the device DOES connect (BLUE NOTE) then i can use it fine for for five minutes tops, then blue note changes to red note on my pc and the unit is locked up playing the music (the display doesn't change and I can't adjust the volume). What the hell is up???????????????

Yes, if you plug it straight in to the card you need a cross over cable. This is standard ethernet stuff.

The first troubleshooting step would probably be to do that-- connect straight to the PC in order to rule out problems with the routers.

Next thing is to make sure XP's personal firewall feature isn't getting in the way. The ports in that FAQ entry aren't the same for the Receiver, so you might want to double-check the ports. Maybe the Receiver uses more ports than the ones you opened on the routers? Maybe it works fine for a while then tries to use a new port and that's when it locks up? In any case, temporarily disabling the firewall in XP and connecting straight to the Receiver with a crossover cable would rule this out.

Next thing is to make sure it's not one of the files on your PC that's giving the player grief. See if it'll just repeat one particular song over and over for more than five minutes. If so, then try playing more songs (progressively larger playlists) until it gives the locking problem. It could be one particular song. Or maybe you're just feeding it playlists that are too big-- it has a known bug where it will lock up if you ask it to play too many songs (fixing this is item number one on their to-do list, by the way).

For more ethernet troubleshooting steps, check the FAQ at www.riocar.org. I know that's for the car player, but most of those ethernet troubleshooting steps apply to the Receiver, too.

Thanks for the pointers. The RioReciever did not like my 100/10 autosensing hub. By runnig it through an old 10M hub I'm able to get it to DHCP.

My guess it the ether is not powered long enough before the DHCP message is sent for the hub to autosense, and the DHCP message is lost.