Can't change server from desktop to laptop

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I have a plex server on my main desktop computer and would like to run plex from my laptop with a NAS instead.
I have a plex pass. I installed plex on the laptop but don’t see how to get it to show up as an authorized server. I followed some instructions on how to migrate the plex server from one computer to another, then to test it I put the laptop plex movie folder location to C:/PLEX/MOVIES and put a movie in there. I can get Plex to play that movie on the laptop but when I shut my main desktop computer down I can’t get that or any other plex movie to show up on the tv, since the tv is only looking for the plex server on the main desktop computer…and on the laptop, the plex home page has the name of the desktop computer on the upper left even when the desktop computer is shut down. I wouldn’t mind slowly adding my movies all over again starting from scratch in my spare time, as long as I can get the Plex server working on the laptop first. Any ideas? If I de-authorize my main desktop computer, will an option pop up allowing me to make my laptop the server? …or should I uninstall plex from both the desktop and laptop and start over starting with just the laptop?..but if I do that, I guess my account information would still be on the web server, so do I also somehow delete all the information from my account stored on the web server then start over or maybe even delete my account before starting over?..but then if I delete my account I don’t want to have to buy a plex pass again. Plex was working fine on the desktop. thanks for any advice.

First off, don’t delete your account. This will not solve anything.

Can be done but you need to worry about the paths your libraries have.

You should see an unclaimed server message.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/218136308-why-is-there-an-unclaimed-media-server-on-my-network/

Having 2 servers on the same network can be tricky. You know… Different ports, router, etc… Luckily for you this is not what you want anyways.

True. That may be the case but you should be able to select servers.
servers

Make sure plex can see your libraries.

What exactly have you done?

thanks for taking the time to help. I didn’t notice an unclaimed server message and before I posted the question I searched google for how to claim a plex sever but couldn’t find the information I wanted. I also checked the dropdown box under the arrow beside the name of my desktop server (as shown in your screenshot) but it did not show any other server name. I was frustrated yesterday and finally followed some clear instructions on a youtube video explaining how to migrate plex to a different server. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPPoc7hcLzA
but all that didn’t quite work for me for some reason, …I must have made some small mistake earlier somewhere which messed things up, which is when I posted my question here.
Now that my head is a bit clearer today I looked around some more and found instructions on how to remove plex from the computer by using the “remove apps” tool from control panel, deleting the plex media server from the localappdata directory and deleting the plex registry key. I followed those steps on both the desktop and laptop computer, then went to plex.tv and saw there was a button to remove the server, so I did that as well. Not sure why I couldn’t or didn’t go thru all the proper steps to delete plex from both computers and on the web account yesterday, but I think I should be able to properly re-install plex on the laptop now…will try later when I have time thanks.

Looks like it worked thanks. Had a bit of trouble installing it so tried uninstalling and re-installing several times. There was one time when after installing and then starting Plex, it said there was no plex server, and Plex presented me with a button/link to download Plex Media Server. That was strange. It’s like opening a program that then tells me that the program I just opened doesn’t exist. Then another thing that confused me was it said that my server location was “nearby”, called “Desktop”. Well my Desktop computer where I once had the plex server is right by my laptop, so I thought that plex was somehow still recognizing and referring to the Desktop computer as the location of the plex server, and i didn’t want that to cause confusion. Finally figured out that plex was naming the server on the laptop “Desktop”. Then a couple of times I got the following error message when it started up… “There was an unexpected error loading the dashboard” so I uninstalled and re-installed a couple more times but the same error message came up so I just ignored it and put a few movies in the library and it seems to be working ok. I guess it wasn’t necessary to add this last reply but just thought I’d do it anyway to let you know how it went. Thanks again for the help.

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