Thanks for responding. Sorry to bother you again, but When you say, “go nuclear,” do you mean delete PMS, reinstall and then configure the library from scratch? or Wipe the computer and build from scratch? I have done both already. I don’t care about reclaiming the server per se. I just want PMS to allow me to have a server. It keeps saying I’m unauthorized or if I do the registry magic, then it says “Initializing server” but has a spinning circle that’s non-stop. Again, thanks for responding and I don’t mean to bother you about this.
Don’t even sweat it. Happy to help even though I’m not. Yes, the nuclear option was wipe all traces of PMS from your hard drive and re-install. And then reinstall the media. If you don’t have to re-install the media I don’t think you have gotten rid of everything. Sorry to hear you’ve already tried this. The spinning circle of death absolutely sucks. You have the same permission issues I do. The claiming of the server seems to be tied into this, which is why I bought it up. I tried to re-install the version before the requirement for claiming the server came about, but it didn’t do me any good. I hate to say it, because we can’t be the only two people with this issue, but the update seems to have run afoul of Microsoft and their permissions somehow. I’m not very computer savvy so I can’t really tell you what to do, but I thought if I added gpedit.msc/secpol.msc and made some of the changes I have read about on the web I would have restored my privileges. It doesn’t appear that it has, but I’m so tired of dealing with this hassle I put it down for a while. I might circle back to it next week if I’m in the mood, but my frustration boiled over because I had a number of issues, in addition to Plex, that all seemed related in some way. Now all of them are removed, so I’m back to square one with Plex, but it’s not on my front burner the way it once was. Maybe the next update will unscramble things, I really don’t know, but for now I’m in the same boat you are. My links now works if I run as administrator and that gets me by for now. Let me know if you eventually solve the issue and I’ll do the same. Sorry for your troubles. I totally feel your pain as the saying goes.
I’m not sure that the revocation running in adminstrator means anything in regards to PMS… I get the same message when I attempted to open Chrome in administrative mode.
I figured out a workaround but it’s a pain to say the least. I will post it later when I have time. The registry is missing around 4 or 5 entries and that’s why it doesn’t work. If you can’t wait for the step-by-step, I will give you a brief rundown now.
After getting frustrated again and pressing a lot of buttons and attempting subdirectories that didn’t exist. I decided to try something out-of-the-box. I started a windows sandbox to see if I could install PMS there. I installed it but had to edit the webpage to enter the server. Once inside, I clicked multiple settings and there was a server. I then went to the sandbox registry and took a snapshot of it. Seen that my inaccessible server had multiple missing entries compared to sandbox server. I then closed the sandbox. I manually edited the values to be exactly the same and added the new registry entries as well. Make sure the sandbox plex installer is same as your desktop plex installer. Make every registry the exact same.
I then loaded up the server and it wouldn’t grant me access to the site. I deleted everything but IPAddress:32400/web and I entered the site. I went to settings and clicked different setting options. and noticed there was a server. Rename the server. Add libraries and such. It is going to think you are remotely connected at first. Once done shutdown the server and restart it, you may not be allowed in again. Delete everything but IPADDRESS:32400/web and enter the site. This time you should see 2 servers, the initial name from the sandbox and your new name. Do whatever you are going to do and shutdown and restart. It should let you in without any editing the web address afterwards. Once in again, delete the old name of the server from the list and you should be good to go. you should be considered a nearby connection now and not remote any longer. I wrote more than I expected and kind of covered everything. If you have any questions, let me know. Also, you may have to play around with the mouse, clicking settings and stuff.
Hey that’s awesome. I’d love to see the step by step down the road. I still wonder what created the issue in the first place though. Unfortunately for me, my C drive was jammed and System Restore wasn’t creating restore points before the crisis (I didn’t have the correct space available) or I would have gone there first. We (my remote help) cleared that up so that won’t be an issue going forward, but it still doesn’t tell me what happened. Oh well. Thanks for letting me know you had some success, much appreciated.
It’s definitely a bug/conflict that stops the server from being fully setup and given all the values in the registry. I basically cloned the server by using all the same values as the sandbox’s registry. I had issues as well with my system restore and being unable to revert back. My issue was supposedly restore being unable to reproduce certain files from the C: folder so the system restore couldn’t complete. Fresh copies of Windows, however, didn’t solve the problem. But creating a plex server in sandbox, with all previous devices, clients/servers, deleted, worked.
Hey Stacula - Any chance you could give me that step by step when you get a minute?..I’m still having all kinds of pesky issues. I can’t seem to get Plex to stay permanently as Administrator even after setting it where it should be permanent. Now my mobile is getting cut off too. It works fine in front of the computer, but when I drive 10 miles and test it I’m offline. It seemed to snap back when I got the computer out of sleep mode, but that shouldn’t matter. I came home and it still didn’t work under my WiFi, but when I woke the sleeping computer it seemed to connect for some reason. I still don’t know if my mobile ever claimed the server, but it doesn’t ask anymore. It just goes offline. I realize the issues are local to me, but I’m so sick of it not working the way it’s supposed to. Ugh…
But it does. If your computer is sleeping, Plex is not running – therefore cannot serve remote requests.
In January I was down in Florida for five days and it worked fine. Same for three days in Boston in March. I’m not sure what it did differently then as the computer will go to “sleep (definition pending I guess)” after not being in use for an hour or so if I leave it on. Why would it work under those conditions then and not now? It will also serve MP3s to my WiFi server in sleep mode too. Maybe not now, but back when it worked. I still think this all gets back to the claiming the server requirements. Can you even tell me if my desktop/Server or mobile have ever claimed the server on your end? Whatever happened has put me in some kind of limbo. Plex says I have remote access with the green check mark, but I don’t really think that I do. If I leave my apartment for any length of time I lose access. Obviously I was never able to address the original issue as running Plex as Administrator is just a band-aid on whatever permissions have been stripped from me.
That depends on how you have configured your computer, particularly on which events it is supposed to wake up again.
There is no such thing as “Wake-On-WAN”. There is only “Wake-On-LAN” – i.e. the computer can be waked by a specially crafted “magic packet” which contains the MAC address of its network adapter. These magic packets are sent by “broadcast”, without a certain destination address. because of that, they travel only within the local network.
So you won’t be able to wake your server from outside your home network, unless you get help from your router to do so.
Some routers have a way to listen to commands from the outside, in order to generate a magic packet for a computer on the inside. That’d enable you to wake up your plex server when you’re out and about. But nothing like this is built into Plex.
Now, most network adapters can also be configured to trigger a computer wakeup upon receiving any data packet (i.e. not just magic packets).
However, depending on the size of your home network and the type of devices in there, this can easily mean that your server computer is waking up every few minutes, because devices are trying to communicate with your server machine all the time. So it is not a very usable way.
Windows computers are also able to wake up on their own, for maintenance tasks, like Windows updates. If you happen to try and contact your Plex server during such an event, you are lucky and will be able to use it remotely.
How your server computer is configured at the moment, I am unable to tell.
I just set it (server/desktop) to never sleep, but it used to be on 45 minutes. Maybe that will have some mobile effect, but I never get my hopes up anymore. From what you describe above my Comcast router upgrade may not be configured correctly on top of the server/desktop going to sleep if I read that right. I don’t know, without someone dedicated to making Plex work in my environment I’m losing hope of ever solving my issues. I can’t do it by reading the forum and just changing stuff willy nilly by trial and error. I can’t do it by watching generic YouTube videos not specifically made to address my issues. Somewhere in the new router, Windows 10 HE re-install, server claiming requirements (why can’t you tell me if my server or mobile were ever claimed? If you can’t just say so. If you won’t I don’t get it.) my Plex permissions have been destroyed. Until those issues are addressed I’m never going to figure out remote access or anything else. Fly by hit and run tech support hasn’t been of much help unfortunately.
Sure. Sorry, I didn’t see this message earlier. The only caveats to this method, which may be altered, is you probably won’t be able to claim an old server, you will need access to windows sandbox (easiest) or use a VM (free should work – Virtual Box). The reason why I said it may be altered; adding the missing entries to the registry MAY allow you to reclaim your existing server. I’m not a plex employee nor a ninja, guru or anything of the like, so you will have to bear with me. My workaround ended up being a complete fix for creating a new server. I was unable to create a fresh server once the issue appeared. I still don’t fully understand why my tinkering worked or what was wrong in the first place, but I can recreate it. If you’re still interested, let me know. I’m going to upload a fresh registry, omitting certain details for you to compare what you have in your registry.
FYI, plex is in two different places inside the registry but it doesn’t matter which one you edit.
I uploaded two different images because the first image, the fresh registry, has edited names so I posted the second one so you the names in full. I censored items that aren’t important (on my current registry) or my personal info.
You can check your existing registry and see what items are missing from the first fresh registry. You can attempt to spoof the current registry for plex with the missing entries. You will end up deleting PMS from your system, registry and every authorized device anyway so feel free to attempt to spoof it first. You will need to enter the FriendlyName registry entry from my complete png and know your server name. I doubt that will work, but it doesn’t hurt to try before you delete everything anyway. When you are ready to start fresh, make sure you enter plex from app.plex.tv on web and delete all servers and authorized devices, then uninstall PMS, delete the entire plex registry and finally look in appdata and delete any plex folders there as well.
Step one is setting up a sandbox or VM and installing PMS. Make sure the sandbox/vm has an ip address (bridged-mode or NAT) that can reach the internet. Attempt to gain access to the server by using <localhost:32400/web OR vm/sandboxaddress:32400/web> from the vm/sandbox. If it says non-authorized or anything but gaining acess, then manually delete the part of the URL that doesn’t allow you access. Once you gain access, if you don’t see an option to claim, edit or creating a server, then play around with settings and check if it popped up. If it didn’t, close the browser and then reopen the browser and enter plex again. I’m available all day today and will be looking for an email from plex regarding a reply to this post.
Thank you. I’ll mess around with this and see if it solves my issue. I appreciate you taking the time to spell it out for me…
I wasn’t done helping you if you needed it. I was just letting you know that you would probably be starting a new server (which was impossible for me to do too), but you could try fiddling with registry entries first. Once you decide and start, I can help you further when an issue arises. Again, I don’t have anything proven and I’m not a Plex guy or a tech expert. I’m just someone that into tech, who ends up breaking software, and then spending hours/days fixing it. There could be other ways or devices to fix your issue but the only thing that worked for me was sandbox/vm then spoofing the vm settings. That’s something you will need to do but first you have to be able to create a new PMS. So you have only 1/2 the guide plan, unless that spoofing will work but I don’t think it will. I forget the missing entries, but I’m pretty sure it’s an identifier that will be impossible to spoof, without having a photo of a working server on your account and the value for the entry. If you send me a pic of your registry, editing out personal info, I can maybe help you spoof it before erasing everything. Once you have a server through the sandbox/vm method, then I’m confident I can spoof it.
Thank you again. I haven’t been dwelling on this issue because it was giving me a headache, but I appreciate your efforts. It might be more complicated than this, but I think what you are telling me is I should probably set up another PMS with a different e-mail address, preferably on another machine entirely (or at least partitioned) and if that works potentially replicate the registry where I need it. Short term, I am running it as administrator, not allowing the machine to sleep and that seems to give me intermittent (at least) access to PMS on the road. I was able to use it, states away, this year by bringing a Bose/Apple iPod deck with a Bluetooth adapter. Once paired with my phone it worked like a dream, even while the desktop/server was sleeping. Mobile phones don’t have headphone jacks these days so it’s not like I need it for public transportation or anything (live in the sticks anyway now), but I just like to show it to people in conversation. Anyway, thank you Stacula. No matter what I’m saving everything you posted and will use it when I circle back to this beast. Thank you.
You losing remote access after a while can also be caused by your router.
Many routers nowadays will disable automatically established port forwardings after a few hours. (automatic portforwardings are the default in Plex)
Manually created port fortwardings are long-lasting.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200931138-troubleshooting-remote-access/
Using a different email address would probably fix the issue, but that wasn’t a realistic option for me since I bought a lifetime plex pass. As of now, I don’t need to do anything special for my plex to work correctly. Yes. Replicating the information should work, but I doubt (but who knows) if it will work with a different email address in the registry, since it will communicate with plex and see that you are a different email address, which means you are a different user. The machine information can definitely be spoofed. I bet it’s a machine, user info and plex’s account server not syncing correctly. That’s why it says unauthorized user. But again, who knows. If you decide to give it a go and need help, let me know. It may take a few days for me to respond because I won’t be actively checking plex’s emails.
Hello;
I’m getting this error too. How exactly did you solve the problem?
I’m sorry CK766, I never really did. I hired someone to take over my computer and forced a permanent Run As Administrator feature on Plex. With that in place I can send an icon to my desktop, click on it and run the software as normal. Works pretty well remotely too. I seem to have lost permissions somewhere along the line and I can’t really figure it out. I spent like a month on it and came up empty. If you read through the replies you can get a feel for what was tried. Stacula has a fix, but it takes some cloning, register editing and other chicanery if I understand it correctly that I haven’t gotten around to yet. I may run out the string on this computer and keep running it as an Admin. I figure once I get a new computer and reinstall Plex whatever is bothering it will be long gone. At least that is my hope. I have made way to many customizations to go nuclear. Thousands of caps, punctuation & artwork edits. This seems like the best way the best way to jerry rig this headache for the time being. It works fine and does most everything it did before except you have to manually tell it to scan and update. I haven’t been adding anything to it lately so the urgency is down on my part. If I click on the icon and run as administrator and tell my computer to never sleep it seems to work great on the road for me. I wish I had something more concrete for you, but I never understood why it started acting wonky. It worked fine for seven or eight years until they wanted me to re-claim the server. After that I started having issues. It’s on my back burner for now. I’m sorry!
1 Like
