Hello I have looked and can’t find anything besides the moving an install to a new device thread which I followed the instructions and am still stuck.
I have been using plex for 2 years and have spent a lot of time building my library. I ended up being forced to do a windows 10 re-install recently, I backed up all of my files for plex and relocated them from windows.old.000 to the new localappdata folder but when I launch plex it still forces me to start a new server and then even when I scan for media files it doesn’t use any of my previous metadata.
I really want to be able to use my old server and not have to make a new one and redesign the entire library with all of my posters and collections. It will take weeks of my spare time.
The only thing that didn’t backup properly was my old registry file so if there’s any way to get my old server operating off my new OS without that please help me. I have tried numerous things and I can’t go back to the previous windows 10 OS.
No matter what I do it just says my old server is Unavailable.
Yes I have followed those instructions but as I said I don’t have the old registry data and that guide makes it sound like the registry data is an optional step so it gives me hope that there is a solution around this and maybe something can restore my old server that I am not doing or that is outside of that guideline.
Yes it was 1,300,000 files and it took 5 hours to copy. Didn’t work the first time so I restored my PC (still on the new OS), copied it all again and it still didn’t work.
There has to be something that is preventing my new OS from finding the server data to host it. If it’s something to do with the registry there has to be some kind of workaround to manually input the values no?
Upon checking it appears that I have 2 users appearing in my path C:/Users/
One is “my name” and now there is one that says “my name-DESKTOP” which was not there before and has plex localappdata in it as well… I don’t recall seeing this additional folder in the path when I copied everything so would the plex server launch have anything to do with this?
Open the Windows file explorer (Win+E)
copy this string into the clipboard %LOCALAPPDATA% and paste it into the address bar of the file explorer. Press Enter.
Into which folder are you thrown after this?
If it is the folder “C:/Users/my name-DESKTOP”, then this is your current user data folder. So that is where Plex is also looking for its data.
If it doesn’t find any, because the old plex data are in “C:/Users/my name” instead, it will create an empty library.
For Plex server to use your old data, you will have to move them from
C:\Users\my name\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server
to
C:\Users\my name-DESKTOP\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server
(while Plex server is not running!)
I deleted the registry entries and uninstalled Plex and moved everything over to the “myname-DESKTOP” and reinstalled Plex. No matter what I do, when I launch Plex for the first time after install, it wants to immediately start a new server. It’s still not relocating the old server
Wow I think I got it! After doing those steps and launching a new server it brought up my old library instantly on a new server and is working throughout my home network. I will have others test it out and make sure it all looks great before deleting the old server.
The only thing that looks out of place is my public port number looks different (I think I had it manually set before). On my router it appears to have 2 new entries for plex media server including the 32400 private port and the new auto generated public port.
Should I do anything to this public port number or just leave it?
