any iTunes experts here? here's my deal. I have a d-link dns-323 external network drive. it has the ability to work as a print server and iTunes server (among other functions). I keep all my music on this drive. i had it set up and working fine for the longest time, then all of a sudden cannot get it to work anymore. It must be a setting that is not right. here is what happens:

when i open iTunes (latest version installed) it detects the dns-323 like it always did. it shows up under the "shared" folder in iTunes. once it loads (takes a minute like it always did), all my music shows up as normal. when i try to play any song, it does nothing. when i try to play another song, the exclamation point shows up on the previous one that did not play. this tells me that somehow, iTunes is unable to read the songs.

i have uninstalled iTunes and deleted all the associated folders and loaded a new copy of iTunes, still exact same problem. I have the "look for shared libraries" option ticked (tried without it too). all the settings on the dns-323 are correct per their instructions (and same as they have been from the start).

I can play music directly from the hard drive. I can add the whole "music" folder contents to the local iTunes library on any computer on my network as well. the songs that i actually add to "my library" play fine. the only thing is that defeats the purpose of having an iTunes server if i load it all on each machine. not to mention how much hard drive space it fills on each machine.

anyone got any suggestions what i have set wrong?