Server Version#:1.31.3.6868-28fc46b27
Source Machine OLDPMSBOX running old-af “Windows Home Server 11 (64-bit)” (yep, 13+ years old) on vintage Opteron1220 (even older…lol!)
Destination Machine MEGAUPBOX running “Windows 11 Workstation” (updated daily, or whatever is latest revision… 23H2 according to it…) i7-11700K+Arc750GPU
OLDPMSBOX is a chimeric relic of a test server that has collected years of iffy parts but keeps chugging along regardless of if its fans are functioning anymore… I felt bad and it has a sporadic drive failure beep that started annoying me about 4 years ago(which I can’t mute anymore because IE is busted and the RAID card interface is written in JAVA1.0 or something exceptionally obsolete), so it got the boxfan treatment till I could find some time to replace the whole thing… Otherwise, if we were all still working with AVIs, the thing still works fine… I jest, it is actually dying for real, so here we are, lol! OS is hosted on some still-functional RPM HDD (C:), loaded the PLEX system onto a different Drive Letter (D:) a buncha years ago because it made more sense then(back in those days you tried to sequester the OS inside a playpen)… eventually, when MKVs became the norm, had to juice the ol goose with a nice dangly (unmounted) SATA SSD (T:) that only hosts the transcodes and is easily the fastest component in the whole contraption. BTW, a big thank-you/shout-out to you all at Plex for making the transcode folder easy to change up, that wasn’t original… for all the annoying changes we have had forced upon us over the years with the layout and interface etc, this one back-end trinket literally added a half dozen extra years to the task at hand with this OLDPMSBOX…
As for 2.0, I think I’ve got everything situated in the MEGAUPBOX, though I haven’t sorted out the HW-trasncodes yet, haven’t gotten that far(an adventure for another post in here, I am sure). But all the parts are floating along and seem to be performing well so far, windows takes about 2 seconds to load up vs i think it takes closer to 8-9mins for its predecessor. The setup is pretty straight forward, I have an OS NVMe (C:) that I aim to stick everything on this go round, and a smaller NVMe (T:) for the transcodes to burn up, all of my media is stashed in a uniform RAID5 block (P:) instead of a collection of random mismatched HDDs (F,G,H,I,J,K…:\ like I have on the OLDPMSBOX, lol).
So here is where I am having the issue… Turns out the OLDPMSBOX won’t update past the old 1.31.3.6868 version(says its because of the OS or something), to which I found an old copy of and have been able to install with no obvious issues onto the MEGAUPBOX, so at least that should be the same version on both boxes. I have been running through this guide(https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/) and been extra careful to not skip any steps that I can tell… Turned off trash on the OLDPMSBOX and did the server Sign Out (making the OLDPMSBOX “unclaimed”), killed the PMS services running and made a ginormous rar file of the whole “\Plex Media Server” folder and manually moved it over to the MEGAUPBOX (its only 25GB in size) where I uncompressed it into a nearby folder. I even exported the “Plex Media Server” registry folder and brought that over too. After the clean install of 6868 on MEGAUPBOX (into the Default “C:\Program Files\Plex\Plex Media Server” folder here), it automatically wants to launch PMS. Now this is where I get stuck, pulling up Plex via the PMS icon near the clock keeps dragging me into a default looking PLXSVR that I can’t seem to get rid of or replace, even when I copy all the contents of the rar backup from OLDPMSBOX over the top and replace the ones in the folder it just loaded up from the fresh install. Dropping the registry keys into the MEGAUPBOX gives me mixed results, mostly failures and unable to start PMS after a reboot. I can see the OLDPLEX listed above PLXSVR, but it acts like that server is offline and is related to my personal plex account info… So no matter what I seem to do, I can’t seem to get the freshly installed PMS on MEGAUPBOX to actively connect to anything but a halfway setup PLXSVR it thinks it wants to host with some botched Libraries. I have repeated the process several times, with and without trying the registry import, but it always pulls up that busted partially setup PLXSVR (which I can tell because I added a new Library in there to try and troubleshoot it once and that hasn’t gone away), even after uninstalling, and wiping out the whole Plex folder in the registry in conjuction with the removals and replacements… How does it keep pointing back to PLXSVR??? I just can’t seem to get around it.
What am I missing? The instructions make is seem like a drag & drop, which takes about 30mins every time I try it, but it just seems to ignore what I copy over and do its own thing.
Appreciate your time, and sorry about the long winded post.
Cheers,
-M
