He’s dead, Jim...

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury) 06/14/2020 at 21:55 • Filed to: None

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Things were fine with my Plex server until I tried to fold on it as well. And recently I noticed that I wasn’t getting the expected recordings. When I rebooted I wouldn’t get any video in Windows, although there was video on boot.

I noticed some visual artifacts, and then eventually the machine would just lock up. It’s a good thing I bought two old video cards on Friday, but this is not what I wanted to do with one of them. There were more problems including a failed power switch and some sparking and smoking when I tried to use a screwdriver to start it - oops.

After swapping the GPU I started getting RAM errors on memory that had been in there for ages. Cleaning the contacts solved that, but it was just more time shot to hell. Then once I got that solved I couldn’t install the drivers for the GPU because the SSD was suddenly full. I went to move some files, but the 4 TB drive for video was AWOL...

More tweaking and the video drive was found (it was always there in the BIOS but Windows wouldn’t see it) but now Windows refused boot. More tweaking and BIOS clearing and everything appears to be working. After needless hours of scratching my head trying to figure out WTF was going wrong and wondering what was going to fail next it finally seems to be fully operational. For now. Confronted by multiple failures like this a weaker person would have tossed this thing and grabbed another computer from the pile, but I’m too stubborn and stupid to let this hunk of scrap metal beat me.

I’m upstairs on the iPad and I can actually play recorded video from the server, so it all seems to work. But now I’m too damn tired to move it from my desk back to the living room. Once I lie down in bed I’m pretty much done for the day, and after exercising this morning I’m exhausted. I’ll move it tomorrow.

getFuckedHerb > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 06/14/2020 at 22:21

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I feel your pain and reading this makes me glad that I let my NAS handle plex with a tidy little package. Best choice I’ve made was investing in a NAS that could do file storage, plex and cameras. I made trade offs obviously, but I regret nothing.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > getFuckedHerb 06/14/2020 at 22:27

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I wish I’d gone  that route, but I had a 4-tuner PCIE card for OTA recording and replacing it whilst also purchasing a NAS would have been cost prohibitive.

getFuckedHerb > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 06/14/2020 at 22:45

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I hear you, I ended up with PLEX before the OTA TV was available so I replaced my OG HD Home run with a Extend . Love it thus far.

barnie > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 06/14/2020 at 22:52

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Looking at the last line of your post: Manana may not even be tomorrow but it sure as hell ain’t today.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > getFuckedHerb 06/14/2020 at 22:55

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I was actually content with Windows Media Center, but the lack of guide data meant that I had to reluctantly move on. I know it wasn’t the best, but it worked and was comfortable and familiar . Funny thing, though - I recently found a service that provides that data again for a small price, and I’ve actually been running WMC again on that Acer Z3771 I rebuilt. That has helped me get some recordings, albeit only one at a time,  until I could get the Plex server running again.