How do you mean “programmatically”?
Via Command Prompt you can use:
- net stop [servicename]
- net start [servicename]
Via Powershell you should be able to do:
- Restart-Service [servicename]
But the PlexService listed in services is the app here, PMS as a service, not the actual Plex Media Server.
No, the PlexService that this creates is a wrapper for an instance of PMS running. If you stop that service, you will stop your Plex Server from running (I just tested it to double check even). If you use the Tray application to stop and start the service, that is exactly what doing the calls I gave above do (even showing the same notification).
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Are there any updates on Hardware Transcoding with the service running? I’ve read through this thread and have seen that it was brought up about a year ago but couldn’t find whether or not this was solved yet.
Thanks!
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I want to run my PC’s PMS as a service (Of course! Or, why would I be here? 
)
This thread is really super-loooong, though, so I hope someone can summarize for me. I have two questions:
- Are there any limitations/issues by running PMS as a Windows service as opposed to running the Plex application?
- Does the latest v1.1.7 of the PMS service properly support the latest version of Plex?
Thanks,
AzJazz
The first few posts of this topic give you limitations eg must use UNC Paths and not Mapped Network Drives for media
One other limitation - is that PMS crashes if run as Service or Headless when hardware acceleration is enabled. So choice between use of hardware acceleration or running as service / headless
Should do.
Thanks @sa2000 - That’s handy.
I can confirm that my latest Plex Version 1.13.9.5456 seems to be running OK with the v1.1.7 Plex as a Service application.
Regarding the PMS crashing with Hardware Acceleration enabled, is this the Settings >> Transcoder >> Use hardware acceleration when available option? I currently have that enabled (and I think it is working properly), and I haven’t seen a crash yet. I have been able to stream 4k HDR videos with SRT subtitles, and I don’t think I can do that without hardware acceleration.
Do you know if the “hardware acceleration” crashes are random?
AzJazz
Yes
Normally crashes in the intel h264_qsv encoder dll soon after starting to transcode. I have not tried it for a while. May be there has been an intel update.
Plus you need to restart the server after checking that option for it to take effect. At least that’s been my experience.
Well I just discovered that I’m using an outdated Plex service (1.1.0) so my questions are:
1.) How crucial is for me to update?
2.) What’s the process to update? Just install over old version after stopping plex service?
Thank you
This should be called the “Plex Service Dance” 
Been doing this for a long time with no issues at all. 
I think the transcoder crashing has been fixed (at least on my Win10x64 v10.0.17134.407 PC). I transcoded 4k UHD audio and video to Low-Def for local and web streaming, and I didn’t see any crashes. 
AzJazz
So it wasn’t a bug in the Intel drivers as previously claimed…
Still crashing for me as soon as I enable hardware transcoding. Latest Intel graphics drivers and Plex Server. I really wish this would get fixed, wherever the problem is!!
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First of all, much love to @cjmurph for making this. It is (theoretically) the solution to a lot of my problems.
That being said, I recently downloaded and installed this app a couple of days ago, and have had nothing but headaches. I have Tautulli set up on my server, with notifications enabled for when the server loses remote access, or just goes down. Previously, I had been having remote access issues, but after installing Plex as a Service, Tautulli has been dutifully informing me that my server is constantly going down and coming back online. In some instances, every minute for a twenty-minute period. Other times it’s more sporadic, with no discernible pattern.
As soon as I uninstalled Plex as a Service, rebooted, and started PMS normally after logging in, the issue disappeared. Does anyone have any idea what’s happening here?
I honestly don’t know. Does anyone else use this application to monitor Plex? We need to see if it’s specific to this install or a problem in general. I’m away from home for work atm so can’t try it myself.
Well, never mind. I ran the server for a couple of hours after I uninstalled PaaS, and I got the same “server down, server up” every minute behavior. I’ve temporarily disabled Tautulli just to stop the constant notifications, so I’ll have to look at this from a different angle…
only if you had two instances of Plex Media Server.exe running - one within the service and one in a user account
I have been using Tautulli and the Plex service for some time without any issues. I have the Plex service start Tautulli.
There are no applications using the port used by Plex? You can view this in the Performance Monitor of Windows.
you have double checked windows task manager to see if there is more than one Plex Media Server.exe ?
