One more try, Live TV won't work after updating server

Server Version#:1.25.6.5577
Player Version#:Windows 1.41.0.2876-e960c9ca

So, this is at least the fourth time I’m posting regarding this. Any time I update my Plex Media Server to any version beyond 1.21.3.4046, Live TV stops working. If I try to tune any channel I get an error message that says to check my antenna. Once I go back to the earlier version it works fine. This functionality is the specific reason I paid for a lifetime Plex pass, but it’s become clear to me that Plex doesn’t give a damn about their paying customers. They spend all their time working on their ad supported options and those of us who were supporting them when they didn’t have those options can just go pound sand as far they’re concerned. I’ve said all this before, and nobody has ever come forward to prove me wrong. This forum is supposed to be where we go for official support from Plex, because they certainly don’t have any other channels to go through. They don’t mind taking your money though, that part works fine.

Are you still on 1.25.6.5577? If so, stay there. Then, delete your DVR in Settings → Live TV & DVR and then add it back. After completing setup, log in via https://app.plex.tv and attempt to tune a channel.

If it still fails, provide your server logs.

I removed the DVR and re-added it, I even rebooted the server a couple of times in there. Still can’t tune any channel. Logs attached.
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-02-26_11-55-16.zip (3.9 MB)

The tuner service isn’t starting:

Feb 26, 2022 11:53:43.895 [2096] ERROR - [ChildProcessMonitor] Jobs: failed to start child process C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Plex Tuner Service.exe: CreateProcessW(omitBinary ? NULL : (LPCWSTR)pathify(job->binary).c_str(), (LPWSTR)utf8to16(cmdLine).c_str(), NULL, NULL, TRUE, dwCreationFlags, (LPVOID)env.c_str(), !m_workingDirectory.empty() ? m_workingDirectory.c_str() : NULL, &si, &processInfo): Access is denied.
Feb 26, 2022 11:53:43.895 [2096] ERROR - [ChildProcessMonitor] Plex Tuner Service.exe failed to start
Feb 26, 2022 11:53:43.895 [8876] DEBUG - [ChildProcessMonitor] Jobs: 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Plex Tuner Service.exe' exit code for process 0 is 195948557 (failed to spawn child)

Any idea how to fix the issue?

Looks like you originally install PMS under user tigerpaw and then tried to switch to user PLEX. Are you trying to use auto login or run as a service?

I don’t even have a user called PLEX. I’m not running it as a service, but it’s set to start automatically when the user is logged in.

If you haven’t already you can use the Windows remove app and then download manually and install as administrator to see if that clears up the permissions.

I’ve done that more than once. Going back to the older version fixes the problem. I guess I’ll just have to stay with the older version.

Set the permissions for the Plex Media Server directory to the user running it. Do it recursively.

That user is the administrator, already has full permissions to all subfolders

Turn off your anti virus.

don’t have anti virus installed.

I haven’t run Plex Server on Win for a long time so I can’t verify, but it is possible that you may be able to find additional information in the Windows Event Viewer as to why the Plex Tuner Service process is failing to start. After opening the Event Viewer start looking under “Windows Logs”, and then “Application” for the specific time where the Tuner Service failed to start. If you don’t find anything under “Application” then also look under the other categories in the Event Viewer.

I checked that already, nothing in event viewer related to anything Plex.

It’s something else that’s installed on your computer that is blocking Plex from spawning a child process so disable everything that automatically starts up on boot and try again.

that wouldn’t explain why the older version works fine and the new ones don’t… There isn’t much of anything installed on that system, it really only does Plex.

Either way access denied is an operating system error not a Plex error. Windows is blocking for one reason or another. Most likely is user permissions and or anti virus.

Given that this issue seems to be impacting only a small subset of installations the problem seems specific to something running or a setup on this device. If it were my Plex server, then next I would install Process Monitor and Process Explorer to start digging into what is happening that is causing the tuner service to fail startup. It can take a good deal of patience to dig through the output to find the relevant item associated with a failure.

So after a lot time and research, it’s my belief that newer versions of PMS simply don’t work right on Server 2019. According to the official list, it’s not officially supported on any Server version newer than 2012 R2, which tells me it’s been a minimum of 6 years since Plex has bothered doing any development or testing on Windows Server. I could verify this if anyone who actually works for Plex ever bothered to look at these forums, but so far I have yet to see that happen.