Ok, it works now... this is what happened.
I recieved my capture card and remote in the mail yesterday, so I was ready to go into production with the box. I added the hardware, and re-ran the wizard. It picked everything up, I chose to use MythTV as my PVR software... then when I tried to watch TV, it said "Cannot play this media"... so I said screw it, and decided to do one more re-install now that i've collected the last bit of hardware I plan on using in this box...
Now, with that said, I re-installed and accidentally chose the UI mode 1 with no 3d effects. No big deal, i'll change it on next reboot right? Ok, so the AV wizard finished, the core/md start up and present me with the second wizard that configured all my devices for me... As I begin to go through this wizard, LinuxMCE detects my windows box as usual... and I proceed as usual. Except there is something different here...
Previously... when I chose UI mode 3... and the second wizard fires up... and it see's my windows box... and it asks me for the username/password for the windows box... then the subsequent shares it detects after that never ask me for a username and password... I assume this is because I supplied it for the main device (windows box)...
Currently when I chose UI mode 1... and the second wizard fires up.... and it see's my windows box... it DOES NOT ask me for a username/password for the main device (windows box) instead... when it starts to see the subsequent shares, it asks me a username/password for each individual share on the windows box. This is different than when I chose UI mode 3.
Now at this point I ask myself... "Is choosing the different UI mode really affecting the way it's detecting my shares and asking for input?" I was very skeptical, it had to be something else I did different. So, I decided to re-install AGAIN this time choosing UI mode 3, and I recorded every single step all the way to getting a drink, and using the bathroom.... Guess what... it asks me for username/password for the file server/main device/windows box and not the subsequent shares it detects... I allow the wizard to finish and check the shares, and they are NOT mounting...
Now.. again, I re-install AGAIN... this time choosing UI mode 1... and sure enough, it DOES NOT ask me for username/password when configuring the file server/main device/windows box but instead asks me for a username/password for each subesquent share detected thereafter.
Ok, so I allow everything to finish, the shares are mounted properly and all my media is there. So at this point I am not looking to see what is different than before. This is what was different.
In the Admin Website...
On the top menu bar...
Advanced -> Configuration -> Devices
On the left device list.
CORE -> Windows Box
at the bottom where the two fields are labeled username/password. My previous installation where I was choosing UI mode 3... these boxes were filled out with my username/password. Obviously because the wizard asked me for the username/password when it detected the windows box(parent device)...
On the installation where I chose UI mode 1... these fields were blank. Obviously because it did not ask me for a username/password when detecting the parent device (windows box).
CORE -> Windows Box -> Shares
at the bottom where the two fields are labaled username/password. My previous installation where I was choosing UI mode 3... these boxes were blank. Obviously because it is supposed to retrieve the username/password for mounting from the parent device.
On the installation where I chose UI mode 1... these fields were filled out with my username/password. Obviously because it asked me for a username/password for each individual share it detected.
So... to sum it up... place username/password in the individual child devices (shares) instead of the parent device. This seems to only be true for windows vista boxes, as when I connect my wife's laptop running windows XP, it works with both methods...
After properly mounting my shares and cataloging all the information, I was able to switch back to UI mode 3 and everything is fine. It was simply a mis-configuration of the parent/child devices. I attribute this bug to Microslop Winblowz...
But, as we all know, things are always too good to be true. Since I made it past this milestone, I went to set my raid up again. When I drop to command prompt to partition and format my 3 250gb drives for the raid, it gives me an error about /dev/hdb and /dev/hdc being in use and I cannot format them. But I can most definately partition them, and write the table, just no format. I checked to see if they are mounted, they are not. Now when I partition and format my /dev/hdd, it works freaking great... wtf man... anyways, my solution to this is probably remove the drives, boot completely up, shut back down, add the drives, and try again.
but when I am worried about, is that I previously had these drives in a raid... but now i'm prepared to wipe them and start over.. I suspect the previous raid has written some kind of information to the boot record, or tables, and when I attemp a format, it sees this and halts. The reason I suspect this, is when I try to run fsck on them, to check for errors, it says this...
fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
fsck: fsck.mdraid: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.mdraid for /dev/hdb1
But I just deleted, and recreated a partition... wtf is it talking about fsck.mdraid?! Well, like I said, it must still think it's in a raid... the admin web panel does not show any raids detected. So I guess i'll be playing with the command line raid utility... only problem is i've never used the mdadm utilities, i've already used the raidtools utilities... so looks like i'm doing some more research..
Thanks everyone for all the suggestions... you guys are freaking awesome...