All files suddenly showing as "Unavailable"

General Discussions
1

Hello Plexperts, hoping to get some help here as I’ve exhausted everything I can think of. I’ll try to provide as much information as possible, but if there is something else I can provide that will help, please let me know.

My Plex Server has been running fine for over a year. My kids were watching a movie on New Years Eve, it finished without any problems or errors, all is well. Fast forward to today, and suddenly every single movie shows “Unavailable” (“Please check that this file exists and the necessary drive is mounted”)

The drive is mounted, nothing has changed there. On my desktop PC I can navigate to any movie I like and open it up in VLC, plays fine. Nothing has changed in my network, nothing has changed on the PC that the Plex server is running on. I’ve not updated any network settings, changed any access restrictions, or anything of that nature at all. As far as I’m concerned, it was working perfectly fine a couple of days ago, nothing changed that I know of, and now suddenly nothing is working.

The only thing I have noticed is that my “Z:” no longer appears as an option inside Plex. In my attempts to fix the issue, I created a new library, clicked Movies then Next, clicked Browse For Media Folder, and it only shows my C drive and a connected USB stick, neither of which have any of my media files. When I originally set the server up, “Z:” was in that list, and all of my various folders were accessible.

If it makes any difference, the “Z:” points to a shared folder on a NAS drive. Nothing has changed with that setup or use, and as I said, I can access all the media files on it and play them no problem on my desktop PC… but whenever I attempt to play it using Plex (both on my desktop, my wife’s laptop, and our TV (where the kids watched a movie on New Years Eve) the error of “Playback Error - Please check that the file exists and the necessary drive is mounted.” pops up and it will not play the movie.

I next took the step of ruling out my desktop PC as the problem by creating a new media server on another PC on the network. Added a Z: mapped network drive, and attempted to create a new library - same problem, the Z: doesn’t show up as an option.

Hoping it’s a simple fix and something obvious that I’ve overlooked, but it’s got me stumped and I don’t know where to go next.

Thanks for your time!
Jamie

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Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-03_00-19-43.zip (2.1 MB)

Added a log file that should show anything that happens when I attempt to play a movie as I normally would, as described above. Hopefully it will help!

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Jan 02, 2022 23:40:41.046 [13352] ERROR - Error opening file '"Z:\Kids Movies\Movies\A Bug's Life.m4v"' - No such file or directory (2)

Something caused the Z: drive letter to be unavailable.

Close your plex server using its task tray icon.
Restart your windows machine. (restart is NOT the same as powering off and back on)
After logging in to your Windows user account, open the Windows file explorer (Win+E)
click with your mouse pointer 1x into the address bar
and type in z:+Enter
What happens?
Are you immediately forwarded to the file share on your NAS,
or are you prompted for username and password?

4

Good morning! I did as you instructed and was taken immediately to the file share folder as normal, no username/password prompt.

However (and not sure exactly why, but not complaining!) I am happy to say that the “Unavailable” problem is gone and I can once again view movies.

I do, however, have a new problem, which appears to be only impacting the Samsung TV. About 50% of the movies I click on attempt to start and then give an “Unexpected Playback Error Occurred”. It should be noted that all the movies that give that error on the TV, do not give any error or problem when I click on them within Plex on the PC. I’ll attach a log file - it covers me playing a movie that I know works on the TV, and then attempting to play 2 other movies on the TV which are giving the error, hopefully that will help.

Thank you for your help thus far, much appreciated!

Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-03_10-33-39.zip (2.5 MB)

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Please disregard, I found a solution from others reporting the similar issue with Samsung TV’s. Thank you once again for your help, much appreciated!

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