WMP 12 And External AV Receiver?

I have read through the forum, but I do not think that anyone has encountered the same problem that I have. I have a Yamaha RX-V2065 AV receiver that is connected wirelessly to my laptop, a Sony Vaio F series with 64 bit Windows 7 using the Intel Core I7 with 6GB RAM and 500 GB harddrive. This allows my home stereo system to play music via WMP.The problem is that the Yamaha can only read the music via WMP 12 that is stored on the internal hard drive of the laptop. The Yamaha cannot read any music stored on the external hard drive. WMP 12 has no problem accessing the music on both the internal and external hard drives - in other words, I can listen to music directly on the laptop with WMP 12 from the external hard drive.The obvious solution is to store everything on the internal drive, but this is not an option since this would use up all the storage on the laptop and would also be insufficient for all the music.Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? The network obviously works and the Yamaha can access WMP 12, but there seems to be some firewall between the Yamaha and the external hard drive.I know this setup works, because it worked about a month ago with my old computer which was an XP using WMP 11. Sadly, that computer is no more.I seem to be locked in to using WMP since that is what the Yamaha is set up for. I have not been able to find anything regarding this problem by searching via Yamaha.Also, I seem to be having the same problem as some others in that the final few seconds of songs are cut off. Has anyone found a solution yet? The laptop should have enough juice for this to not be a problem - 64 bit Windows 7, Intel Core I7, 6 GB RAM, and 500 GB hard drive. Again, as with the old XP using WMP 11, this was not a problem and that computer had less juice than this new laptop.