Plex keeps crashing my PC

Plex Media Server
1

This is irrespective of what I’m playing or what I’m playing it on. A few seconds after playback starts, my monitor goes dark and my peripherals turn off. If I’m playing on another device, the player there will get stuck buffering and my PC will have crashed. PC also crashes if I’m just playing back through Chrome. I’ve been using Plex for a few months now, I’ve only been having this issue today. Usually I stream full 4K HDR Blu Ray rips to my TV, so specs aren’t an issue.

I’ve uninstalled, reinstalled, repaired, rolled back, updated Windows. Right now I’m doing a virus scan and after I’ll see if there’s an nVidia driver update.

Server Version#: Both 1.24.5.5173 and 1.25.8.5663
Player Version#: All of them.
Server logs:
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-04-03_20-39-46.zip (674.1 KB)

2

Issue only happens on your computer, and not the non-computer clients correct?

Sounds like a bad driver or graphics card. Have you looked at the Windows Bluescreen dump files or the Windows Event log?

3

Correct, it’s just the computer/plex server that crashes. I’m not very familiar with Event Viewer - I haven’t been able to get it to show me application logs before the last startup. There’s nothing in BSOD logs.

4

You are running PMS from within a remote desktop session, right?

Try Windows Remote Desktop breaks HW Transcoding (QSV) - Here's the fix!

Open the registry editor of the server machine.
go to the branch
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\PerSessionTempDir
If it is set to 1, change it to 0

Reboot may be necessary.

Here is a reference what this is doing Configure Temporary Folders for an RD Session Host Server | Microsoft Docs

Alternatively, you can also change the Group Policy or edit the RDP session properties:

To configure temporary folders on the RD Session Host server

  1. On the RD Session Host server, open Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration. To open Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration, click Start , point to Administrative Tools , point to Remote Desktop Services , and then click Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration .
  2. In the Edit settings area, under General , double-click either Delete temporary folders on exit or Use temporary folders per session .
  3. On the General tab of the Properties dialog box, select or clear the Delete temporary folders on exit check box and the Use temporary folders per session check box based on what is appropriate for your environment, and then click OK .
    If you clear the Use temporary folders per session check box, a user’s temporary files for all sessions on the RD Session Host server are stored in a common Temp folder under the user’s profile folder on the RD Session Host server.

You can also configure temporary folders on the RD Session Host server by using the Do not delete temp folder upon exit and the Do not use temporary folders per session Group Policy settings. These Group Policy settings are located in Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Session Host\Temporary folders and can be configured by using either the Local Group Policy Editor or the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC). Note that the Group Policy setting will take precedence over the setting configured in Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration.

5

Should the crashes continue, please wait until Server version 1.25.9.5721 becomes available to you (it is supposed to fix some of the crashes).
If you experience still crashes after this, please enable the Windows crash dump collection Crash Logs: Plex Media Server | Plex Support
and post these crash dumps.

6

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