Forcibly terminate the TCP socket via this app: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html
PlexScriptHost.exe hits 100% CPU
Windscribe VPN (https://www.reddit.com/r/Windscribe/comments/8hrsso/version_181_build_44_causes_100_cpu_usage_on/) terminates all TCP sockets when the connection is established, which triggers this bug in Plex.
@yegors said:
Forcibly terminate the TCP socket via this app: CurrPorts: Monitoring TCP/IP network connections on WindowsPlexScriptHost.exe hits 100% CPU
Windscribe VPN (Reddit - Dive into anything) terminates all TCP sockets when the connection is established, which triggers this bug in Plex.
I have experienced this issue when connecting/disconnecting to Windscribe VPN while PMS is active.
When connecting to a VPN server I also get this issue in that PlexScriptHost.exe have multiple processes (4 or more) which is reported as āPhthon (32bit)ā in Task Manager and consumes 100% CPU between them allā¦ It will stay this way until you exit Plex Media Server!
Same issue happening here!
Just a heads up. This was raised with Windscribe by myself and likely others. Just yesterday Windscribe pushed v1.82 Build 17. Immediately after starting, Windscribe popped up with a message stating āWindscribe has detected the PlexScriptHost is using a high amount of CPU due to a potential conflict with the VPN connection. Do you want to disable the Windscribe TCP socket termination feature that may be causing the issue?ā
I have clicked yes and the issue is no longer present.
I had circumvented the issue previously with a custom script that would restart PMS on every resume from sleep, power on or restart after Windscribe had successfully connected, however, it is good to see Windscribe have not left this issue unanswered.
To manually enforce this setting, open Windscribe > Preferences > Connection Tab > Uncheck āForce close all TCP sockets after connectionā.
All was working fine with the āForce close all TCP sockets after connectionā option disabled however recently I updated Windows 10 to build 1809 and have had constant issues with Plex Media Server againā¦
Iāll be connected to VPN then load Plex Server and it seems to work fine but a few hours later 100% CPU issue again due to Plex python scripsā¦ Please could someone at Plex help check into this as force closing TCP sockets should not cause this as before and even now Iām not sure what the cause it but it seems only Plex is being affected and I have other services/services hosted on my PC that open have open ports and no issues at all with the Force close all TCP sockets after connections enabled or disabled.
Updateā¦
Iāve been doing some testing with Plex and Iāve just found that Iām getting the 100% CPU usage issue after Plex Media Server has been loaded for over 2 hours on a Windows 10 version 1809 (latest update) even without Windscribe loaded so I think this might actually be a new issue and perhaps related to the updated version of Windows 10 perhaps as thats the only change I can think of recently?
Keen to know if others have run into this as wellā¦
One other bit of software I have that did recently do an update is SyncTrayzor although I donāt think it would cause any issues I plan to disable and exit it and continue testing to see if I can narrow it down to any thing in particular!
P.S. I just recently also tried updating to Plex build 1.13.9.5439 and having the same issues with this build and the previous build before this oneā¦
This is an old issue and basically Plex Media Server does not work correctly if its back-to-back tcp connections for the python system process are killed and when that happens it ends up in a loop.
This was registered as an issue at the time it was discovered but there are NO plans to make any changes to Plex for this - Plex does need its connections running and not tampered with by any other third party product
These are the original investigations into the issue
Hi sa2000,
Thanks very much for your reply and also for copies of the links before, I also run Windscribe but this occurs with or without it loaded so Iām wondering what else might be terminating the TCP loopback connections?
It seems to have started since upgrading to the latest update of Windows 10 (might be coincidence perhaps?)
Is there any way for Plex to kill a process that gets in a loop/stuck as consuming 100% CPU usage is really bad and means I need to manually load up Plex server on my PC each time someone wants to watch something, I can no longer access it externally as I come home to a hot room (and probably a big power bill as well)ā¦ so itās not a good situation to be in and was really hoping Plex might have something to help make the scrip process more robust and resilient?
I do have a few addonās from years ago as well as a trakt.tv addon that unfortunately canāt run scheduled (would be great if Plex could plugin to trakt.tv automaticly) but I run it every now and then manually as well as a few TV and other streaming addons that I also donāt really use so happy to uninstall all but trakt.tv if you think that might help?
I needed users to run Procmon.exe and capture the moment the tcp connections were dropped and that was how we found the culprits. The original one was Networx bandwidth monitor
have a look at the investigation in that linked thread
It was logs + prcmon capture into a PML file and noticing when the cpu usage shoots up - PML logs are mammoth and millions of entries and it is the additional info and logs and PID numbers that help in finding the relevant bits
Hi sa2000,
Ok sure thing, Iāll see if Iāll be luckily enough to capture this as it seems to take around 2 hours (I believe) before it occurs but Iāve just uninstalled plugins on my system in hope that might helpā¦ I also have plex unsupported app store installed as well as Trakt.tv but all other addons (around 10+) have now been uninstalled to help clean things upā¦ (fingers crossed)
Procmon would kill your machine if left to run that long ! It uses loads of system resources. See if you can get it captured in 30 min or 1 hour max capture, But watch system resources and virtual memory usage when running - The PML zips very well but still would be massive
Iāve unfortunately not managed to capture it just yet, each time it occurs Iām not capturing logs (as you said they get huge really fast and essentially need to sit at the computer for hours waiting for it starting an stopping logging constantly and not been luckily enough to capture it when it starts as yet)
I did get an updated snip of the TCP/IP entries of each PelxScriptHost.exe as attachedā¦ first two only have 1x listening port were as another has 3x listening ports open but also consuming 25% CPU (which I assume is 100% of one of the 4x cores I have in my PC each process) so it seems something is stopping the established connections but itās just a matter of finding out what that might beā¦ Is there no way for Plex to detect a broken link/connection and re-establish it if that is the case?
you could filter the display for procmon to operation containing tcp
and every hour if the problem has not occurred to select clear display menu item and free up resources - so would mean watching once every hour - assuming one hour PML file is still reasonable size and in terms of virtual memory usage
When you get the loop to check the process info for each and see if we have any that dropped to one tcp listening ie losing the back-to-back tcp connections and then stop procmon and copy out all logs and get the process info for tcp listning connections
Interesting turn of eventsā¦ over the last few days Iāve updated my network drivers (via Windows update) ā¦
Intel 82579V Gigabit card was running 12.15.22.6 - 4/04/2016 (Microsoft Driver Provider)
Updated to version 12.15.31.4 - 25-07-2016 (Intel Driver Provider)
This did not seem to help (or did not seem to as I ran into the high CPU usage again)ā¦
However, during the issue currently with PMP Playback Error I was messing around with secure connections, optimized the database, cleaned bundles, reinstalled Plex and then ended up running the Plex installer again and running a ārepairāā¦ I also updated my NVIDIA driversā¦ So far Plex has been running for around 24 hours without the 100% CPU load issue for the first time in over a monthā¦
Iām unfortunately not too sure what might have improved things (or combination of changes) but Iām hoping it continues to no longer cause any issuesā¦ as in the past I found I could not go any longer than say 2-3 hours without running into the high CPU load issueā¦ fingers crossed it might be resolved!
P.S. During the issues I had run updated versions of Plex and experienced this issue across the last few updates, what I did not do before was perform a ārepairā on the installation so itās possible that might of helped as thatās something I donāt belive I tried before (although itās been so long I canāt be 100% sure as I did try allot)ā¦ good luck to anyone else that is still having thing issue perahps try some of the items listed above and see if it might help you as well!
A repair is possible if there was a corrupt installation. This can arise if the install is done without remembering to shutdown Plex Media Server processes.
I would not expect network drivers to affect 127.0.0.1 connections - I donāt know.
Glad issue is resolved
Just to report back to all, itās been around 4 days now and so far not a single high CPU usage issue even with VPN software and all other software back to normal use so it seems what ever the issue was itās been fixed some howā¦ If any one else is still having this issue it would be great if you could try the following one at a time to see what might fix it for you: (Iāve tried to put it in order of what I think might help best but keen to know any ones feedback if you are able to do one step at a time to try narrow it down to what the cause is)
GOOD LUCK!
Iām running into this same problem and tearing out my hair trying to solve it. Can you advise which specific settings you changed when you say āchange secure connection settings on the serverā? Iāve tried everything else you and others have suggested, and nothing seems to fix the problem.
For context - Iāve never installed Networx, Windscribe, a VPN, or anything else that might obviously be terminating TCP sockets (Iām not totally sure what that even means). Originally I had three plugins installed (SubZero, Trakt and Webtools) and four PlexScriptHost processes consuming 25% of CPU resources each. Iāve now uninstalled the first two plugins, and only have two PlexScriptHost processes running, each consuming ~30% of CPU resources. An improvement but not actually a solution, as consistently after 2 hours my CPU goes from ~8% idle usage to ~60-70% idle usage.
Iāve run a ProcMon capture and tried filtering by both the process name (plexscripthost.exe) and the PIDs and nothing comes back, so Iām very confused as to what these processes are even doing.
And of course Iāve taken the standard steps of disabling any scheduled tasks that might be causing this, turned off preview thumbnails, audio loudness analysis, Gracenote analysis and so forth.
Iāll attach logs if anyone cares to take a look: Plex Media Server Logs_2018-12-05_09-22-57.zip (3.4 MB)
I know the frustration you face, I was just about to give up on Plex myself and almost became bald in the processā¦ hahahaha
In regards to the secure setting, Iām not sure that had any thing to do with it but it was something I did change as Plex had an issue with SSL certificate at the time I was facing this issue as well so this was a side change to fix another issue but I though I would mention it just incase it could have had something to do with getting things workingā¦
You can find it under āGenralā Settings, but you need to ensure you are viewing āadvanced settingsā (top right)ā¦ you will then see an option that says āAllow fallback to insecure connectionsā by default I think this might be set to āOn same network as serverāā¦ Iāve changed mine to "Never as per the below screenshotā¦
But during the issues with Plex SSL certificates you needed to set this to āAlwaysā meaning you were allowing insecure connections to your server (unencrypted) ā¦ Might be worth a try just leaving is set to āAlwaysā to see if it helps and if it does try changing it to āNeverā and see if it settles things down (fingers crossed for you)ā¦
My installation has been good ever since even with Windscribe VPN I have no issues any more but never found out why actually fixed it but hope some of the steps above might helpā¦ If not already done try re-install your network drivers to the latest available by your mainboard manufacturer as well as graphics card drivers..etc..
GOOD LUCK and wish you well, also hope someone can help check into the logs for you that youāve includedā¦
If you still having issues after the above, one other thing to try is right click on the Plex server icon and select āOpen Plug-ins Folderā
Check for any old/custom plugs that might be hanging around and remove them then re-start Plex server to see if that helpsā¦
I currently have the following folders in this directory (but I think I installed some again since my clean up):
ExtendedPersonalMedia-Agent.bundle
Services.bundle
Trakttv.bundle
WebTools.bundle
If you have any issues after cleaning up just download a fresh copy of the Plex installer and perform a ārepairā installation that should fix things up nice and clean I believe (or it did for me any way)ā¦
Please report back on your findings as Iām sure others will benefit from it if you manage to stabilize it (as well as hopefully Plex team might help them narrow down what is causing these issues for so many users and hopefully manage to work out how to make it more robust for all in the future).
