Plex Media Server won't startup after reinstalls on Windows 10

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.18.4.2171-ac2afe5f8
Windows 10 version 1903

Yesterday, I was swapping in new media hard drives on my Windows 10 computer. I forgot to stop Plex after I unmounted the hard drive with its library location, so I shut down PMS after the fact. I moved that drive to an external SATA device to copy files to one of the new hard drives.

After a restart, PMS launched on boot and tried to build a new library at that same file location so I stopped PMS again. After I got all of my files transferred to the new hard drives, I tried to restart PMS without any luck.

So far, I’ve reinstalled Plex Media Server with no success. I even tried the Microsoft troubleshooter mentioned in this support document. I also reinstalled Visual C++ 2015 (x86), both directly from Microsoft’s website and from the PMS installer (after uninstalling the previous version). I also uninstalled the newer 2017 version after reading about some possible conflicts there.

My library location is different from the default, choosing to move it to a larger hard drive for the thumbnails. I’m not sure if that has any bearing on the current situation, but it’s the only setting I can remember that deviated from the default installation settings. The old library is still intact, but is at a different file path after I decided to remap some drive letters.

Windows 10 has an optional update to version 1909 that I am installing at the moment, I’m not sure if that will affect the issues I’m having.

Edit: Sorry, forgot the log files:

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Another curiosity I just noticed: There’s no Plex folder in %localappdata% to speak of. The program is installed at C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server but there’s no folder in local app data.

I uninstalled Plex again and tried to install again. When Plex Media Server Setup is running, it stalls at the last step (Processing: Plex Media Server) for several minutes before the installer says everything was successful. The installer has created two folders in %localappdata%\Temp:

{09199D3C-0509-4D3B-A3D5-FA65EFE7E71E}
∟ .cr
   ∟ PlexMediaServer-1.18.4.2171-ac2afe5f8-x86.exe

{BCB9DA95-FFBD-41E1-8C8E-1C1DCF509BF0}
∟ .ba
   ∟ 1028
      ∟ ...
   ∟ 1031
      ∟ ...
   ∟ 1036
      ∟ ...
   ∟ 1040
      ∟ ...
   ∟ 1041
      ∟ ...
   ∟ 1042
      ∟ ...
   ∟ 2052
      ∟ ...
   ∟ 3082
      ∟ ...
BootstrapperApplicationData.xml
logo.png
plex-chevron-85.png
progress-bar.png
thm.wxl
thm.xml
wixstdba.dll
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I was able to fix this problem by deleting Plex’s registry entry along with uninstalling Plex and Visual C++ 2015 (x86)!

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