New and massively disconcerting problem.

[zang]

I have two boxee boxes; both bought nearly a year apart. One in our living room and one in our bedroom.

A few days ago, one box began having problems connecting to my NAS. It was scanning files just fine, but clicking a file would result in a very slow load time for the initial play confirmation dialog, and when confirmed, would result in an endless spinning wheel. Trying to back out of the spinning wheel resulted in a complete lockup.

I reset all settings. No dice.
I factory restored, then both did an auto update as well as an update from USB. No dice.
I deleted all caches. No dice.

The other box was working just fine, so I decided to swap them out as the living room one gets far more use.

Then the freshly swapped box began doing the same damn thing.

I again did settings resets and factory reset. No change.
I tried both wired and wireless. No change.
I tried connecting via NFS and AFP. No dice.
I tried shutting off all other devices on the network in case something was throwing out noise. No dice.
I ran diagnostics on the NAS, and checked the NAS' transfer speeds. All were fine.
I created different shares on the NAS. No change.
I created a new user login. No change.
I tried streaming from a different device, rather than the NAS. Same slow speeds.

Everything else works fine on the boxes. Netflix streaming is still nice and fast. Browsing speed remains unchanged.
Live TV works fine.
It has seemed to improve slightly; in that after a long wait, it will now actually start playing a file. Albeit with *massive* delay, buffering (even on small non-HD files) and occasional crashing.

It all seems to be related to playing back files over the network, because playing from an SD card is speedy.

What the hell is going on here? I know that the boxee box doesn't fully wipe all settings even when asked to, so is there something that could be corrupting the network stack here? I have tried just about everything, and it's driving my wife and I nuts.

[darcilicious]

The other box was working just fine, so I decided to swap them out as the living room one gets far more use.

Then the freshly swapped box began doing the same damn thing.

Just to clarify, both boxes have the same problem when in the same location but not in the other location?

[zang]

Just to clarify, both boxes have the same problem when in the same location but not in the other location?

No, *both* are now exhibiting the problem in either location.

[B0ink]

Is the issue not possibly at your NAS or router end as both boxes not working at the same time seems odd.

[tronbrain]

I have two boxee boxes; both bought nearly a year apart. One in our living room and one in our bedroom.

A few days ago, one box began having problems connecting to my NAS. It was scanning files just fine, but clicking a file would result in a very slow load time for the initial play confirmation dialog, and when confirmed, would result in an endless spinning wheel. Trying to back out of the spinning wheel resulted in a complete lockup.

I had a similar problem once, though the problem was observable from all devices in my network, and not just the Boxee. I needed to do a full reset/power-down on the NAS. That restored everything to normal, in my case. I recommend checking if other devices on the network are having the same problem with the NAS. Odds are they are and it's not the Boxee Box (though people tend to blame the Boxee).

If the NAS has gone rogue on you, it could be interfering with all traffic on your local network.