Plex for Windows won't start

Plex Players Desktop Players
21

Nope :confused: didnā€™t solve anything changing resolution as the article suggest.
Tapping shift 3 times didnā€™t do anything unfortunately. Anyway if I just hover the mouse on the icon I see a ā€œblankā€ (white) preview of the window. That of course is not normal and suggest that the app is having some kind of issue and itā€™s not just ā€œout of rangeā€

22

Have you tried to install the latest driver software for your graphics adapter?
Not from Windows Update but from the manufacturerā€™s website? (manufacturer of the graphics chip, not the manufacturer of the computer)

While the app is closed. remove the whole configuration folder of Plex player.
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex
(CAUTION: keep a close eye on the folder name. It must be just Plex and NOT Plex Media Server! If you delete or empty out the latter, youā€™ll lose your whole server.)

1 Like
23

Latest Nvidia drivers. Latest version of Windows.
Cleared Appdata directory

The starting the app still take much longer than it should. Your suggestion mightve cleared some bad historical data to reduce it by a few seconds, but its still an issue.
You need to let time for the background processes to finish before trying to reopen the program when trying to replicate the issue.

Still takes my app 20+ seconds to look like its doing anything at all.
vs how it used to instantly start up, just like pmp still doesā€¦

Please try this yourself. install pmp alongside plex. Watch how slow plex app opens in comparison

24

I am using an nVidia GPU as well. App startup is pretty much instant for me.

You might wanna disable that old shared server which is now defunct, so your clients donā€™t try to include its libraries in their left side bars anymore. https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/users-sharing

25

ok sure, I left that old shared server. Cleared app data.

Doesnt change the start up time for me. Still 20+ seconds before anything happens.
PMP is still instant.

Thanks for the suggestions, but it seems like thereā€™s an issue in the client that seems to have been introduced recently, but not affecting everyone.

1 Like
26

Just updated my NVIDIA drivers to the latest release, un-installed Plex player and installed latest version (1.39.1.2763-300bb607-x86_64) - still no joy.

On a whim, I decided to install Plex Media Player and see if that works - lo and behold, it starts up just fine. I immediately got a message that my credentials were expired, so I logged into Plex.tv, and PMP showed my server. I started watching a show just for testing, and it worked.

Thinking perhaps the credentials issue also related to the Plex app, I tried that again, but I still got the same behavior: Blank page icon in the taskbar, and the app never started. I tried uploading both logs, but for some reason Iā€™m getting an error when I do so; otherwise you could see both logs for possible comparison.

27

That was the solution for me. Deleted Plex folder and then started Plex again, it started with no issue

28

While the app is closed. remove the whole configuration folder of Plex player.
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex
(CAUTION: keep a close eye on the folder name. It must be just Plex and NOT Plex Media Server ! If you delete or empty out the latter, youā€™ll lose your whole server.)

This worked for me as well. I didnā€™t uninstall the app this time, just deleted the Plex folder in %LOCALAPPDATA%. I had to sign-in again of course, but everything is working properly now.

2 Likes
29

Did you add quite a few smart collections to the home page?

30

nope. My home pages are the default of just pulling in the libraries.

Did not setup any smart collections or go out of my way to enable them.

Iā€™m happy these suggestions worked for others, but in my case, I dont see how these suggestions change that the app itself is opening slow vs another plex program-- which is loading the exact same libraries.

1 Like
31

Ditto.

I was having slow performance on the previous update and this latest update wouldnā€™t launch at all. Just my cursor showing busy for about 1 second and then nothing. Deleting the plex %localappadata%\plex fixed it for me. Had to log back in, but itā€™s running!

32

The desktop Plex player failing to launch for me turned out to be a file called ā€˜highlander.lockā€™ in ā€œUsers[user]\AppData\Local\Plexā€. Once removed, latest version of Plex (currently v1.39.1.2763) launched normally. Deleting the entirety of that folder folder was not necessary. The file in question was not recreated, no idea what itā€™s purpose was. But this fix worked on multiple machines I own, running both Win 10 and 11. Prior to removing the file only the older version of 1.29.x.xxxx would work.
(AppData is a hidden folder within your user profile directory. As others have mentioned, typing %LOCALAPPDATA% in the Start menu will give you quick access if you donā€™t want to deal with unhiding these folders)

33

Can confirm that after deleting the LOCALAPPDATA folder Plex is now working for me again. Thank you for the suggestion!

34

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