Windows server gets slow and then crashes once I sit at the computer

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 4.73.3
Player Version#:
<If providing server logs please do NOT
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-26_11-22-54.zip (8.1 MB)
Windows server gets slow and then crashes once I sit at the computer. So it happens twice a week. I notice when it starts to crash the pictures of the movies and tv boxes start not loading and then when I load up to the PC the Server crashes. Not the PC but the Plex media server app does. Thanks.

2

How old is the PC? I didnā€™t look at the logs but it might be a hardware issue. Do you use the PC for anything else?

3

The log files do not capture the crash.

  1. Disable verbose logging for Plex Media Server.

    Verbose logging adds too much information to the log files. It causes them to wrap too quickly, and desirable information may be lost.

    Settings ā†’ Server_Name ā†’ General.
    Uncheck the box for verbose logging.
    Leave the box for debug logging enabled.
    Save Changes

    See Reporting issues with Plex Media Server for detailed instructions.

  2. After the next crash

    a) Restart Plex Media Server
    b) Wait 2 - 3 minutes for PMS to fully start ā† Needed to let log files capture startup information.
    c) Go to Settings ā†’ Troubleshooting, download the log files, attach the zip file to the thread

4

Amazon.com: Intel NUC 8 Performance-G Mini PC (NUC8i7HVKVA) - Core i7 100W, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD : Everything Else

its pretty new plus it has the 32gb update for ram and it gets used for VR once a month. Thatā€™s about it.

5

Thanks so much!! I will be doing that and report back when it happens sir. thanks so much man!!

6

Where are you storing your media? External Hard drive? If so, this might be your issue. Try using a different USB port.

7

Iā€™m using a 48TB synology nas with a 10Gigabit connection between them. Just checked the drives on it and they seem fine.

8

Yeah, that should be fine. When you say 10 GB connection between them. the NAS is connected directly to the server or to your network switch?

9

Itā€™s running through a 10GB switch. Itā€™s the unmanaged 5 port one by Net gear. Havenā€™t seem to have issue my main pc is on that one too. Donā€™t know if plex has a problem with that. havenā€™t tested that to be honest.

10

Lets see what the logs turn up and we can go from there. at the same time, i see that the NUC has 2 ethernet ports, they are both gigabit but they interface to the system bus via different controllers. Might be a bottleneck somewhere depending on the data being processed. are the Bit rates for your files high?

11

I do have a 10 gig thunderbolt adapter. The synology nas has been upgraded with a 10 gig card too. Sorry, should have mention all of that too dude.

12

Yes the bit rates can be high on some. 4k definitely.

13

No worries. 1 Gbps is more than sufficient even for 4k content. I have a few directly ripped from some pretty high bit rate 4k disks and itā€™s nowhere near 1 Gbps. get rid of the TB adapter and see if performance gets better. are you moving that many files between the NAS and your NUC to need to the 10 Gbps adapter? Having the NAS on the network at 10 Gbps I can understand but what is the use case for the 10 Gbps connection to the NUC if you donā€™t mind me asking

14

No biggie. It was an old 10gig adapter I used for work. I edit 4k and 6k off a nas with a few people and needed the bandwidth between a laptop and the nas. So I just used it on the nuc once I started using my big computer for it. Lol useless upgrade I know. :rofl: But I will definitely try switch back to the old port just to see if the issue gets resolved.

15

Two additional items: a) graphics processor selection; b) HDR ā†’ SDR tonemapping

Graphics Processor Selection

The NUC has the i7-8809G processor, which has both Intel and AMD integrated graphics.

Make sure Plex is using the Intel UHD 630 graphics for hardware accelerated transcoding, not AMD. Plex has no official support for AMD GPUs.

I do not know if this has anything to do with PMS crashing. However, it should make PMS perform better when transcoding.

See this thread and this web page for additional details and how to configure Plex to use the Intel graphics.

HDR to SDR Tonemapping

On Windows based systems, Plex has limited support for tonemapping with Intel integrated graphics. See the support document linked below.

If the system cannot use the Intel graphics, it will fall back to using the CPU, performing the tonemapping in software.

The process is compute intensive. If it cannot be performed in real time you will most likely experience buffering or the streaming may simply fail.

You can try disabling tonemapping in Settings ā†’ Transcoder. The system will still use hardware acceleration for transcoding 4K media. However, the colors will be off (washed out), as there is no tonemapping.

16

:joy: :+1:t5: :+1:t5: :crossed_fingers:t5:

17

:smiley:

1 Like
18

Ditto. LOL
Iā€™ve been wanting to upgrade my network to 10 Gbps but thereā€™s no real need for it. LOL. 2.5 is a more reasonable upgrade so thatā€™s what Iā€™ll probably be doing in the near future.

19

Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-28_16-58-34.zip (7.6 MB)
It finally happened! it crashed. hopefully this sheds a light.

20

The crash is visible in the log files. The crash uploader ran at 16:53, and PMS was restarted at 16:56.

Unfortunately, I do not see why the system crashed.

It looks like someone was watching something remotely and the video was being transcoded, then things just quit.

Any idea what was being watched? Any chance it had EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus) audio? There is a transcoder bug with EAC3 audio. The fix is in a beta release.

The transcoder uses R:\ as a temp location. Is that a ram drive? Any chance it filled up? I didnā€™t see any error messages. Just wondering.

Maybe someone else will spot something.