Media Player Play To Error "Failed to retrieve media Information from media server"

Wholy gaucomolly! It worked! Thank you very very much for solving my problem. You guys are Great and are worth 10 stars! Thank you so much, your truly saved me, Julie :)

I am using windows 7 with the most recent WMP. I have not made any changes to anything (unless I accidentally stopped a process under services) and now when I use the play to or simply drag the file to the play to window I get a red x and it says failed to contact the media server. XBL and my ISP are arguing with one another, XBL says I need to set up some port forwarding my ISP says they are full of it.

Hi Andre...that's strange...can you tell all of us some more details...I mean if it worked in the past what has changed now? Which version of windows, WMP are you using? What's the end device...TV? I upgraded to windows 8.1 now...and there is no playto option anymore...however I can still access the media from the TV...To help you more...describe what is happening now...stuck on ''Contacting the Media Server' again?

The content is on the same computer.  Streaming is enabled and the receiver is "allowed." 

I am not sure if this is solved or not...but I found the solution last night after I spent the most frustrating 5 hours of my life! This is surely a windows problem. I recently replaced my HP laptop with a Dell Vostro 3450 and I suddenly found that 'Play To' feature wasn't working with my Samsung LED TV UA55C8000 .To confirm that it wasn't a firewall or format related issue I even used Samsung PC Share software on my PC to act as the DLNA server...With PC share as the server WMP12 didnt find any problems 'Contacting the Media Server' ...but with its own library it just remained stuck there, with an eventual failure message. [Point to be noted was that even when it failed to contact the media server, I could control the TV volume using the same window!]

This is what did the trick for me:

1. Closed WMP12.
2. Go to Services [Control Panel->System and Security->Administrative Tools->Services]
3. Locate the service with name 'Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service'
4. Stop the Service manually.
5. Locate the service 'UpnP Device Host'. Stop the service and start it again.
6. Start 'Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service' now.
7. Close control panel and all associated windows. Open Windows Media Player...right click on a playlist and see if PlayTo option lists the TV. Try playing now...it started playing for me at this stage!

I have gone through the above steps, and I had worked for me in the past but now it seems that there is nothing that I can do to stream my media to the tv, any thoughts? Xbox tech seems to think it's a port forwarding issue, I've gone through what they suggested and still no luck.