Cannot Play any Videos Unless I Restart Plex Process

Plex has been running like a top until recently. Out of nowhere I noticed that videos would not load, on most devices (Roku, Web, Mobile) if a video was selected, it would just show it was loading but it would either just hang there or go back to the video selection screen. I also noticed that new videos I added were not being indexed. Only after I restarted the Plex process via task manager would Plex index any new videos and I would be able to play a movie again. Only the first play of the movie would work. If I tried again, it would just go back to the same behavior.

I was on my windows 10 machine and tried using the native windows app from the store and noticed that it gave an error

Error creating a new Play Queue
Timeout connecting to server bunch of numbers and something that looks like a GUId.plex.direct

I am running plex v1.9.7.4441 on a Windows 10 PC with all the latest updates. Server is running fine and other processes do not seem to be affected, only Plex. Currently have a HDHR and SubZero for subtitles but that is about it.

Any ideas? I have seen some people asking about similar situations but I did not see anything that gave me an idea what to do.

UPDATE: tried running a repair on my plex server and that did not work

Please recreate the issue then provide me the logs for PMS. Using Plex Web, go to Settings \ Server \ Help \ Download logs. Post that file here.

Logs attached, thank you!

Added note: Tried downloading latest plex update through admin portal and the download is hung.

Do you have 2 NICs in your computer? 1 connected to the internet directly and the other to a router? That’s what it looks like from your logs. This is going to confuse Plex.

Good question, there are two NICs on the machine, one Wireless and the other Ethernet. I cannot recall if they are both enabled and/or connected. If so, should I disable one of them? The strange thing is that this has never been an issue until now as I have not made any network changes in quite some time on that machine.

One of them was giving a public IP, which is why I thought maybe you had something connected directly to the internet. If you are not using both, disable one. Hopefully it’s the WiFi.

Turns out there were 4 adapters: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Hamachi. Hamachi was likely the one that had the internet IP. All adapters except the Ethernet have been disabled. After that I rebooted the server and will see if that fixes it

Went back to same behavior. Looks like the network was not the culprit

Can you get me a new log so I can check without the extra network adapter info?

New logs attached

I’m still seeing a 2nd local IP address for your server.

Nov 15, 2017 23:12:43.327 [1252] DEBUG - * 2 {11324242-7B6E-4311-9B94-8BC926088241} (25.73.x.x) (loopback: 0)
Nov 15, 2017 23:12:43.327 [1252] DEBUG - * 15 {CA31C1D2-9FFD-4DBD-92D1-FD80005ECCF7} (10.1.x.x) (loopback: 0)

25.73.x.x is not a private network address and you can run into DNS issues when not using a private address. Your setup still seems odd to have 2 IP’s even though you said you turned the others off.

I’ll uninstall Hamachi altogether so that should hopefully eliminate that as a factor

Hamachi uninstalled and process restarted. Went back to same behavior after single video play. Logs attached.

Need a little help. Reviewing the end of your log, I don’t see where you tried to play a movie. I see some errors related to DVR, but I can’t tell where you are trying to play the movie and it fails.

ok will run some more stuff and get more data tonight, probably regenerated the logs too quickly that time

new logs attached. Thanks for all the help!

I wanted to check in and see if there was any other info I can provide. At this point I cannot see any better option other than uninstall plex server and rebuild it.

Sorry, turkeys got in the way. I’m still not seeing the problem show up in your logs. Maybe you can narrate what you are doing because I can’t tell. Your logs from the 18th have info from the 16th to the 18th. There is some playback activity on the 16th but nothing on the 17th or 18th that I could tell.

I do see that you’ve enabled Plex’s DLNA server. If you don’t need it, I would turn that off. I’ve seen rogue DLNA clients cause network issues.

This sounds similar to the issue I have been seeing using a Roku device: