Server Unavailable

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#:1.14.1.5488
Player Version#:

Hello Plex Community,
I have been having some recurring issues for the past couple years and, up to now, has been very manageable.

A couple years back I was migrating my server from one machine to another and I was doing some experimenting with a second server. I did not intend to have multiple servers but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I now have this ghost server that has been appearing off and on since. The drives are all mapped wrong (based on the previous machine) and is (was) unusable in its current state. Whenever plex was running this server all I had to do was reboot the machine (win10 pc) and my current server would be pick up. I would also “delete” the unwanted server through the web app settings page.

A couple days ago, this happened again, except after a reboot it would still pick up the ghost server. Multiple reboots resulted in the same unwanted server. Looking deeper into the issue, I discovered you could delete Authorized devices so I deleted the unwanted ghost server, as well as the old sever from the previous machine (maybe I should not have done that?)

Now, plex no workie for me. The web app won’t even run on the pc, the server shows running in task manager but the web app will not launch. The only way I can access plex is through plex.tv but, obviously, no media. I simply get the Server xxx is Unavailable

I have followed most troubleshooting steps provided by the Learn More link on the same page as Server Unavailable. I logged out of everything plex in my home and I installed the most recent version of the server from plex.tv and no change.

I am now at a total loss for what to do next.

I have been using plex for 5+ years now and I love it, serves my needs exactly. I am not ready to give up but if this is not recoverable, I am also willing to start over. If I can recover from this, obviously that would be ideal.

Any ideas? Any logs or anything I can upload, or am I past that point?

Thanks

2

Sounds like you might be running Plex under different accounts. Use https://support.plex.tv/articles/204281528-why-am-i-locked-out-of-server-settings-and-how-do-i-get-in/ to reset your server.

3

Thanks MovieFan,
I followed the instruction listed in the link you supplied, but no dice.

A few things to note. Step 1 of Remove Certain Entries says quit the server so it’s not actively running. I right clicked on the icon in the system tray and selected exit. Is that what they mean? Because, after doing that, looking in Task manager, there is still a Plex Media Server (32 bit) still running, plus a couple other Plex related services.

Later on in the process says to sign into plex account in the local web app. There is a not saying if already signed in, to sign out and then sign in to create a new connection. Then it tells you to sign into my plex server with my plex account. Huh? Aren’t I already doing that by signing into my plex account in the local web app? I now feel like I am missing something as it is not working.

I get the “no soup for you” message

So, regarding the registry entries I deleted, after I launch and sign into plex, would it not re-populate those values?

I repeated the process and ended the Plex Media Server service in Task Manager as well, and now the local web app won’t run. I just get a blank browser window that perpetually says loading.

4

I just rebooted the computer and the local web app now runs. I also now see what they mean by logging into the server after logging into plex.

However, now I am back where I started: my target server is unavailable and the ghost server is the only option.

5

Do you have multiple Window users on that computer? When Plex Media Server runs, it uses the settings for the user that you sign into Windows. If you have multiple Windows user, you can end up with multiple versions of Plex Media Server.

Or did you install PMS as a service? If so, this uses a specific Windows user account. If that is a different user than the one you log into the computer with, changing the registry won’t help. You need to redo that with the correct Windows user account.

6

I will check but I am fairly sure there is only 1 user account on the machine I run PMS on. However, a few years back, when I changed hardware to the existing machine, I also moved my database over as well, rather than starting from scratch, so maybe that has something to do with this.

I’m not sure how to install as a service, but I have configured windows to launch PMS (as a service?) to run when not logged in. The actual PMS install was done normally and I configured windows later to do this.

7

On the current machine, there is only 1 user account. I also checked the Microsoft system configuration app and the only service listed on the services tab for Plex is the Plex Update Service.

8

This is what I was referring to. I’m not very familiar with setting Plex to be a service, but I’m sure this is the issue. Let me get someone else more familiar with this to help you get this sorted out.

9

How did you do that ?

plex.tv information shows you have 2 servers running both on a machine with local IP Address 192.168.86.38

So it is probably one running as scheduled task or service - perhaps under SYSTEM user account and the other runs on the account you normally use and has Start Plex Media Server at Login enabled.
You can disable that in system tray Plex icon options or delete registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Plex Media Server

We can find the user accounts the Plex Media Server.exe instances are running in by searching HKEY_USERS in the registry for ProcessedMachineIdentifier and see where the 2 entries are found. You would need then to convert the SID to the actual windows account name for each case for looking into the list in Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

If you are running under SYSTEM that is not recommended and best to run in same account you normally do installs with. I run PMS as a service in non admin account and install/update with admin account - but that gives me extra steps everytime i install/update PMS - i have to delete registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Plex Media Server to avoid having multiple instances running

(I use PMS As a Service wrapper which you can consider
See PMS as a service )

10

I just wanted to chime in and say you’re not alone. I upgraded to the latest yesterday and now via Chrome I now get 2 instances of my local server listed as well. Clicking around it’ll disappear quickly though I don’t know how I can continue to browse other people’s servers that I have access to. Doesn’t make sense for Plex to say my server isn’t running if I’m using it’s web portal to get access to other servers. I’m not running this in any kind of weird user mode, standard Plex installation/method of running.
If I load the webpage for my plex server and click a managed user it connects to my local server, but once I click on my main profile my server “disappears” and I’m connected to everyone else’s server that I have shared access to.
Search is also jacked up, and can’t click on any of the results, it just refreshes the page.
Rebooting/shutting down plex makes a difference for about 2 minutes then it acts crazy again.
I’m going to try and go back a revision…to something that works.

11

Your issue is completely unrelated to the one being discussed here
The symptoms may be close but the issue would be completely different

Please raise separate forum topic with debug logs from the server and Plex Web
See this article for location of Logs which you can manually copy out and zip the copy
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/

and for plex web logs
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201611836-plex-web-app-logs/

12

sa2000, I set up a scheduled task to run PMS when the computer boots without having to sign in.

I have disabled the sys tray icon to start PMS at login.

I searched the registry for the identifier but it only had 1 entry (if I am understanding correctly)
image

I looked for and found the profile list and the only thing I found was an entry under a sub folder (?) called Profile Image Path with the value C:\Users\david And that is the account I log into. However, I could not find anything in this section relating to the ProcessMachineIdentifier above. So, not really sure I did that right.

13

What user account would this scheduled task run under?

so you find entry for ProcessedMachineIdentifier starting with CA5ACAA3BB2F2E073

I expect you to find another one starting with EF053315481AE68

I was hoping you would find it in the search below this
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server
which is for user account SYSTEM

14

There are definately 2 processes running as indicated in the screen capture below, one is SYSTEM and the other david.

image

when I navigate to HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Software\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server I find the ProcessMachineIdentifyer starting with CA5A.

15

it is exactly as i said - you can see you have the scheduled task instance of Plex Media Server.exe running under user account SYSTEM as you can see in Task Manager

See my earlier advice not to run under SYSTEM - this is the 2nd account that you were asked if you had running Plex Media Server.exe under

So delete your scheduled task

Run the Plex Media server under user david as it is running now
and look into using the PMS As a Service wrapper that many users including myself have been using for years. You don’t need to invent your own solution and end up with such problems

I already gave you a link to the forum topic for this service wrapper

16

I apologize for the pause, I try to stay from the computer on the weekends; family time.

So, to recap, I have servers running, one by SYSTEM and the other under account david. It has been like this for a couple years so this explains all that.

Currently, I have disabled “Start Plex Media Server at Login” and have deleted the scheduled task. I also deleted HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Plex Media Server in the registry.

I have restarted twice and both times I checked the system tray and no plex icon, so it didn’t start after I logged in. However, there is still a Plex process running under SYSTEM. Curious which server would show up, I opened a web browser and called up 127.0.0.1:32400 and all it does is display some xml code. Looking through the code I see the processmachineidentifier and it is the one starting with ca5acaa3bb2f2e0735. There is also the name of the ghost server so this is the one I DON’T want.

I decided to search the registry more thoroughly, and knowing what I know now, I found the other registry entry that you were expecting to see, so I assume that is the david account.

Two (main) questions:

  1. I am curious why the SYSTEM version is running without an entry in the task scheduler? After I finish typing this, I am going to look (not perform) through the steps to run as a service, maybe that will tell me something.

  2. I am not exactly sure what I need to do next. You may have mentioned it already, and I am going through the thread to see if I missed something.

Thanks for your patience, and I really appreciate the help.

17

There should be only one Plex process running under SYSTEM and that is the Plex Update Service.exe

If you have deleted the scheduled task for Plex Media Server.exe and also deleted the registry Run registry entry for Plex Media Server and restarted the system, i would not expect any Plex Media Server.exe to run

If it is still running - we could use SysInternals Process Monitor to run on boot time and save PML file and then can see what started it
The PML would be big but it zips well
see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

18

I have Procmon downloaded and running, do I enable boot logging? Is that what you are meaning? Is there any other config I need to do?

After rebooting, do I just go find the logging file .PML and zip that up?

19

Here is the boot log I captured. It’s pretty big so I hope it captured what we are looking for.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bMu21V23UUpx7SFz6l8IZkkweGgEMLeQ

21

Thanks

You have a program named gpscript.exe that is starting Plex Media Server.exe under user SYSTEM with AppData in C:\Users\Public\AppData\Local

C:\WINDOWS\system32\gpscript.exe

Command Line

gpscript.exe /Startup

See if there is an entry for it in the registry in
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run