Plex Media Server unavailable after switching from another Windows 10 account

Plex Media Server
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The Plex server runs in the “user” context. Which means that the registry settings, as well as any and all data in the Plex data folder is only available to this user.
As a result, if you start Plex server under a new user account, it will behave as if it were never installed on this computer. Because it doesn’t have access to the data in the other Windows user account.
Additionally, if both Windows user accounts are logged in, Plex server might be running twice, as demonstrated by the above screenshot. Look at the column “User Name”.

If you use a different Windows user account on the same computer, you will need to make sure that:

  1. you don’t start up Plex server under the old user account anymore.
    The best method is to explicitly log out from this Windows user account and never log into it again. After you log into it a final time, seek the Plex icon in the task tray, right-click on it and disable “Start Plex Media Server at Login”
  2. copy both the Plex data folder and the registry content from the old to the new user account. Perform the copy only while Plex server is not running! https://support.plex.tv/articles/201539237-backing-up-plex-media-server-data/

If you are regularly using both Windows user accounts, occasionally even concurrently, you must make sure that:

  • only run Plex server in one of the accounts
  • make sure to log into the Windows account with the plex server first. Later perform an account switch to the other account. To make sure plex is still running in the background.
  • the Windows default behaviour to already log in to the last-used user account even before you type in your password, can be disabled with a policy or this registry change DisableAutomaticRestartSignOn.zip (401 Bytes) (it might only work in the Windows 10 Professional version, I haven’t tested this on a Home version)

There is a way to run Plex server as a Windows system service. However, this will lead to a loss of the ability to transcode in hardware. If you don’t know what a Windows service is, you can read up on it here: PMS as a service

It might be beneficial, if you dedicate a separate folder (or even better a separate hard drive) to the Plex Data. A guide how to achieve that can be found here: [HowTo] An extended guide on how to move the Plex data folder on Windows