Plex Server Vanished. Completely Stumped. Please Help!

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Hey Team! First time posting here so hopefully i categorized this thread into the correct location and tags… please let me know if I didn’t!

Ok so I’m completely stumped here.

Haven’t had any issues with Plex in over a year and the first time I’ve had this particular issue happen.

Inexplicably I went to watch a movie today and my server/library is completely gone. I’m logged into my account and all that shows up is all of the free streaming services that Plex offers (applicable pictures attached at bottom of this post). All signs of my local server and media are gone. I house all my media on a JBOD drive and double checked and all the media is still there and accessible.

My web app is up to date and the server app on my windows 11 machine asked to update when I opened it, which I did, but even after restarting my computer there’s nothing. I have a friends server that I can access as well, and he mine, and it seems it also can’t reach out to his server. However I can log into my plex account and it shows my recently watched media, so obviously it’s connecting to SOMETHING, just my local server has vanished.

I’ve had it plenty of times where the media is offline before. My last big head scratcher a year or so ago was that i had let stablebit drivepool get too out of date and it closed down access to all of my shared media drives. However even then my server was still in plex, just couldn’t watch the media. This is different in that the server doesn’t even exist. Even in the settings bar there are no options for accessing the server.

I’ve done quite a bit of google searching and don’t seem to find anything that fits my exact issue as most of those are people who can see their server but the files within it are gone or inaccessible. I found a reddit thread with something “similar” and the poster as well as another individual said doing the following:

  1. Quit/exit your Plex Media Server, so it’s not actively running
  2. In your text editor, remove the following attribute/key pairs from the Preferences.xml
    file:
  • PlexOnlineHome=“1”
  • PlexOnlineMail=“jane@example.com”
  • PlexOnlineToken=“RanD0MHex1DecIm4LtoKeNheR3”
  • PlexOnlineUsername=“ExampleUser”
  1. Save the edited file
  2. Launch your Plex Media Server

Fixed their issue. So I tried it. shut down the plex server, edited the preferences file, saved, started back up and… nothing. I figured at the very least it would have logged me out or something but it didn’t. Just right back to where I was. Logged in, no server. Hopefully that doesn’t mess anything else up but I gave it a try.

As some other things I tried I made sure stablebit was updated, and it is (however i don’t think that’s it since i had trouble accessing the jbod drive last time that was an issue and no issue now).

I turned off AVG, malware bytes, and even my windows defender firewall and restart the plex app just to see if one of those maybe updated in the background without me noticing and did something but… still didn’t work.

I saw some things about some people having to give authorization or a token for “docker” (which I don’t believe I use unless it’s a backend thing) or something like that but their issue seemed to be that the media in their server was inaccessible or offline/missing, whereas my server altogether is missing.

I’ve verified that when I open the plex media server on my desktop (server machine) that plex is indeed running in the task manager. It’s just crazy cause I watched media on it 2 days ago, haven’t interacted with it since then, and then sit down to see that the server is missing (and computer wasn’t restarted, still in same state as when I left it).

I’m really racking my brain here and hoping someone can help. While I’m not even sure if it would actually fix the issue, I reallllly don’t want to uninstall and reinstall (never had to do it before so i’m not even sure how that works) because I’ve spent an untold amount of hours on a very large media library doing custom posters for movies, making curated collections (50+) and more and it would make me cry if I had to re-add/scan my media into my library again and redo all of that. I have 2 kids and not enough time as it is so that’s the last thing I want to do if there’s any way to help it.

For reference, I watched a movie on the server 2 days ago, casting it from my android phone plex app to my TV. Was busy yesterday so didn’t watch any media, and then went to watch something today and ran into this issue.

I’m guessing it’s possible something updated in the background that broke it, but honestly I have no idea what it could have been. Low key terrified over here that Plex just randomly deleted my server altogether and now I need to redo everything. How could that even happen?

Thank you anyone for any help and for taking the time to read all of that. Really appreciate any input you guys might have!

Images:

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That was just the preparation for the most important step: claiming your server (i.e. connecting it with your plex account again).

Read it carefully, it has two methods you can try.

For any of the two methods, you need a working internet connection and no internet filters. Make sure you don’t have any ad blockers, “clean internet” filters, or other firewall/black list filters activated.
Some ISPs provide this on their side, to be activated in your customer account.
It can also be beneficial to circumvent the ISPs DNS servers completely, by using a custom DNS server address. (1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 are known-working examples)

If you are using Windows 11, disable “Smart App Control”.

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Thanks so much for the response! I’ll definitely try this when I get home.

However, that article is from April 2023, I’ve never had this issue before… Why would it all of a sudden, out of the blue happen to me in September 2024 if it’s been something for nearly a year and a half? I could see when they first implemented it being kicked out and having to do this but what would have changed now to make it randomly require me to claim my server?

EDIT: So I was just reading through the article you attached and realized something that seemed odd last night but I didn’t really think much of it until just now.

When I opened the plex media server app on my Windows PC, it opened just fine, was logged in, server and libraries missing of course, but app opened fine. However the Plex icon was not in my task tray, even though I was staring at it open in front of me. When I checked task manager it also showed plex was running, but still no task tray icon that could be interacted with… wonder if it’s linked with my issue somehow?

I did find this forum thread below with a similar issue, but it’s 9 years old so not sure how relevant that is to the current landscape, although i’ll check my AVG and see if for some reason it did something (however i did turn it off completely and it didn’t come back so I have my doubts thats the issue)

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/4by5rh/windows_10_plex_icon_missing_in_system_tray/

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This can be a hint that Plex server is currently running under a different Windows user account than the one you are logged into.
If your Windows machine has more than one user account (even if it’s normally only used for administrative purposes), you should try this:

  1. Log out from your Windows user account
  2. log into the other Windows user account. Check if you now see the Plex task tray icon. Log out of the Windows user account.
  3. repeat with all other Windows user accounts. The goal is to be logged out of all user accounts. (The situation of being logged into to several user accounts at once is easily created by using the “Switch User” mechanism in Windows.)
  4. now log back into the user account that you are regularly using.
  5. reboot Windows
  6. log back in. Is the Plex icon now present?

(If you are running Plex server as a Windows system service [you cannot do this by accident, as it requires additional software], the above procedure is probably not effective.)

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Tried to claim server and none of it worked. Also I only have the one user account on my plex host PC, my own (whom is also the administrator). I logged out of it and logged back in. no fix. restarted PC (for the 10th time) and no fix.

I noticed some odd things that I think all might be effecting each other/all part of the same issue so I figured I’d lay them out and see if there are any dots that can be connected.

  1. Plex media libraries inexplicably “disappeared” 2 days ago. Was working fine 2 days prior to that. I am logged in, but only the live streaming services show and my server is nowhere to be found

  2. I can verify the server is “running” as it appears in my task manager. However, it is not appearing in my system tray icons area.

  3. I Have a friends server that I shared/was also connected to (Diablos in the pictures) and now that server is “currently unavailable” with the message below it that states “verify you have a network connection and that the server is online”. I have verified with my friend that his server is indeed online.

  4. I have shut off all of my anti virus programs (AVG, Malware bytes, and windows defender) and it does not seem to have done anything.

I’m getting desperate over here lol. Wish I had a local “plex technician” near me that could pop over and just saddle up to my computer hahah but really do appreciate your willingness to help! Hoping I can find a resolution. My daughters are very sad they can’t watch their shows :frowning:

I’m not sure if this is outside the realm of what you’d be willing/want to do but is there like a log file or something somewhere that someone with know-how could look at that might tell them/give a hint at what the issue is, by chance? I see in the localappdate folder there’s a “logs” and “crash report” folder but they’re all filled with tons of seemingly nonsensical files.

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What exactly is appearing in your task manager? What is the precise name of the running process? Where is the executable located?

The only server from that user hasn’t been seen by plex.tv for over a year.
So, that means either your friend hasn’t activated regular remote access and is accessing his server remotely by some other means (a VPN into his home network for instance, to which you don’t have access),
or your friend has switched to a different plex account.

Your server has pinged plex.tv about 10 hours ago, so it appears to be somewhat alive.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server]
"logDebug"=dword:00000001
"LogVerbose"=dword:00000000

copy the above into notepad.exe
save it as .txt, then rename the file and change the file name extension to .reg
shut down the plex processes using task manager, then double click on the .reg file.
Confirm that you want it to make changes to the registry.
(it’s simply making sure that debug logging is activated)
Now start Plex server regularly from your Windows Start menu.
Now let it sit for 5 minutes.
(Do you still don’t see the task tray icon?)
Shut down plex server again, then zip up the file Plex Media Server.log in the log folder and drag it into the message editor of this forum.

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Thank you so much again for your continued assistance, it’s very much appreciated. Sorry the weekend got crazy busy and wasn’t able to get back here to report.

So Friday night (before your follow up) in an act of desperation I was searching around through the localappdata folder of Plex and found the backups folder where it has a few previous versions of the install.

I was nervous “reinstalling” one of those might screw up my server and I would have to redo everything but we my kids were having friends over to watch something the next night and it hinged on me being able to get the server up and running.

I found the most recent of the 3 backup applications from 2 weeks ago, double clicked and installed it, re-opened my plex server aaaaand… All was working perfectly, just as it had been. Media, collections, everything.

So, other than it saying there’s an update for my server available (which I won’t be doing at the moment) it looks like all is good. At this point I can only assume something with the most recent plex server update tanked my server/libraries for some reason. Not sure what it could have been but rolling back to a previous version from 2 weeks ago solved it.

I will keep a log of the info you gave me though in case at some point when inevitably I must update I may need it again. I’m hoping it’s just this particular update that ruined it and they fix it in the future.

Appreciate it again!

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A post was split to a new topic: Created new Window suser account – library missing

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