I’ve recently been noticing an issue where PMS crashes. I’ve noticed it happens after a few days where the application on the server closes itself and won’t reopen properly unless it is run as administrator. When I attempt to reload the application it would give me an error saying it is unable to load its media database. I would load it as admin, and everything would load fine.
Initially, I thought I was running out of resources based on something I found in the event viewer, so I doubled my RAM and made sure that the system pagefile wasn’t getting overloaded. Even with these changes there were no positive results.
If I run the service as Administrator, everything works fine for a few days, until PMS closes itself yet again. Just recently in the past week, i’ve noticed that if i attempt to load PMS normally, it will take upwards of 3 minutes to successfully start the program and allow access through the web UI and apps (rather than the normal 5ish seconds), but this time it would actually load. On top of that, I’ll get an error that says “Server settings unavailable” through the web UI, as well as plug-ins will not load on any device, and the entire interface seems much slower, even on other devices and through the iOS app on multiple iOS devices.
I’ve tried looking through the Windows Event Viewer and the Plex Logs, but I think i’ve been looking at this for too long and haven’t been able to come to a resolution.
@ShahidRahaman said:
I’ve recently been noticing an issue where PMS crashes. I’ve noticed it happens after a few days where the application on the server closes itself and won’t reopen properly unless it is run as administrator. When I attempt to reload the application it would give me an error saying it is unable to load its media database. I would load it as admin, and everything would load fine.
Initially, I thought I was running out of resources based on something I found in the event viewer, so I doubled my RAM and made sure that the system pagefile wasn’t getting overloaded. Even with these changes there were no positive results.
If I run the service as Administrator, everything works fine for a few days, until PMS closes itself yet again. Just recently in the past week, i’ve noticed that if i attempt to load PMS normally, it will take upwards of 3 minutes to successfully start the program and allow access through the web UI and apps (rather than the normal 5ish seconds), but this time it would actually load. On top of that, I’ll get an error that says “Server settings unavailable” through the web UI, as well as plug-ins will not load on any device, and the entire interface seems much slower, even on other devices and through the iOS app on multiple iOS devices.
I’ve tried looking through the Windows Event Viewer and the Plex Logs, but I think i’ve been looking at this for too long and haven’t been able to come to a resolution.
you could upload logs zip file with debug logging enabled for the time when it fails to load the database
it is possible you have incorrect permissions for the account the Plex Media Server runs under. You mentioned it is a service. were you using SYSTEM or a normal windows user account ?
I run Plex Media Server as a service and it is not running in an admin account. It should work - provided you have set the permissions correctly for the local app data path that Plex Media Server runs in. Do you have default ? It would be %LocalAppData% or you have set a path in the server setting? If you have set a path, you need to make sure the plex account has full access to this path - FULL permissions
I’m experiencing the same issues.
Ever since I wiped and reinstalled Windows10 and installed Plex then regedited Directory P:\ where Plex folder was stored and it restored it all.
symptoms as above. If I don’t run the exe as administrator. It’ll take minutes to load instead of seconds and then I cannot access the settings page. Close it from system tray icon, run as administrator and it’ll load as normal in seconds.
Any suggestions? Should I have installed Plex as administrator (right click, run as admin)?
Shut down Plex server completely.
Then take ownership of the Plex data folder (or grant your regular Windows user account full access permissions)
Here is a graphical utility which makes this task a little easier than with the default Windows tools: http://lallouslab.net/2013/08/26/resetting-ntfs-files-permission-in-windows-graphical-utility/
If you also use the DVR feature or the optimizer, you might also need to “treat” your media storage, to reset the access permissions on all those items which were written by PMS while it was running under the Admin account.
Thanks @OttoKerner for the advice.
Just applied it now and will let you know how I get on.
Edit. Still doesn’t work unless I run as administrator.
Any more ideas?
Edit edit. - read posts. There’s a program to claim ownership. That fixed it.
Thank you!
