Server Version#:latest as of July 13th 2025
Player Version#:latest Windows
To be precise, what is happening is that Windows playback stops working, even on the hosting machine*, but also on another Windows machine connected to the same wireless network using my Plex credentials. And yet my Android phone’s player still sees the server and works fine (I’m using a pre- “New Experience” version of said player).
*In other words I’ll fire up the hosting machine, and sitting at said machine will double click on the Plex icon in the system tray (Windows 10 Pro machine) and the browser can’t make the connection. Neither can the Plex Windows player app on a Windows 11 machine.
Bizarre, no? It’s not even that there was a Windows server version update because I checked. The same Win 11 machine connected through the network fine a couple of days back and yet today wouldn’t do so.
So for the Windows server machine, just hit the wrench icon, look for Server: Network: Secure Connections and find a dropdown item for plex direct or is it more complicated than that?
When it happens again, I guess I can try disabling mobile data (and I will) but I don’t see why it would even work using mobile data in the first place, because I have remote access from outside my home LAN disabled. If the phone had resorted to using mobile data, wouldn’t that be considered accessing the server from outside?
Also, when the problem happens next, I’m going to check my TV’s Roku’s connection to the server as well, and see if that is somehow still working and connecting to the Windows Plex server machine.
Well, the behavior happened yesterday, and the phone was definitely not using mobile data because I turned off wifi and opened the android plex app, and got bupkis, but it worked fine with wifi on (on the phone).
I looked for something that mentioned DNS rebinding in my TP-Link Archer A9 router’s settings, and couldn’t find anything (to be honest I didn’t know what category would have something like that, although I suppose it’s wherever you type in a particular DNS you’d want to use).
So I’m stumped for now. Don’t know why (if it’s the router “secure connections” thing you mentioned) it would only affect the Windows viewer app on the same network and not access over wifi by the Android app.
The workaround of shutting down and restarting the PMS on the hosting machine resolves it for a while, but it’s a bit inconvenient.
