Bizarre MKlink behavior in new Emby build

[RIP314 2]

A few days ago I added a bunch of TV shows, but they weren't showing up in Emby. Media scan would run and be done in a matter of seconds with no updates. Even stranger was that new episodes of shows that were already in my library would show up when added, but it wouldn't add any new shows. After lots of restarts and then an Emby reinstall it wouldn't load any of my TV library at all. I had been wanting to do a system wipe  with a complete windows reinstall anyway so I took this opportunity to do it. With the new windows and new Emby install (I did NOT try to copy my old programdata for emby it was a clean reinstall) it still was refusing to load my TV library contents. After fussing around with it even more I discovered that once I deleted the one MKlink I had for a show that I also had used in my Comedy library then my TV folders suddenly started loading again. I've never had any problems with MKlinks before and I find them to be an extremely useful tool to keep my massive library in one spot. To make things even more perplexing I use MKlinks for the directory folders to all my libraries aka when I build a library I point Emby towards an mklink i.e. C:\Movies (an mklink which points towards D:\Movies) I do this so if I ever have to move my folders around I don't have to rebuild my whole library into emby. I've been doing this for years now without issues. At one point before I discovered the problem I did point Emby towards my actual TV folder in D:\Television and it still would not work until I had deleted that one series which used an MKlink to get to it. With my movies and television libraries I can work around this problem, but with my mixed content libraries "Comedy", "Documentaries" and (especially) my Pro Wrestling libraries this would completely ruin my setup. Has anyone else experienced any issues with this new Emby build in regards to mklink? This just started back on the 17th.

Edited October 20, 2025 by RIP314

[Neminem 1518]

Hmm curious did windows update before the issue started?

Not running on windows, meaning can't test.

[RIP314 2]

No, and I'm still running Win10, but it looks like there was a new emby release/update on the 17th, I suspect this was the culprit.

[Neminem 1518]

Ok then devs needs logs if it was working before, but not after server upgrade.

Server logs and version before and after where you discovered the issue.

 

 

[Luke 42077]

Hi, Emby itself actually has no treatment of symlinks. It is handled automatically by the dotnet runtime. Emby Server 4.9 did update from dotnet 6 to 8, so that is very likely related.

[RIP314 2]

based on what you're saying there is no work around from Emby's side?

[pünktchen 1409]

You could try if a junktion "mklink /j" makes a difference.

[RIP314 2]

19 hours ago, pünktchen said:

You could try if a junktion "mklink /j" makes a difference.

that's what I'm using mklink /j

 

[pünktchen 1409]

14 minutes ago, RIP314 said:

that's what I'm using mklink /j

Oh, my bad. From reading your statements i've thought you are using mklink without any extra parameters, so actually like with the /d option.

[RIP314 2]

On 10/20/2025 at 2:25 PM, Luke said:

Hi, Emby itself actually has no treatment of symlinks. It is handled automatically by the dotnet runtime. Emby Server 4.9 did update from dotnet 6 to 8, so that is very likely related.

am i wrong in thinking that you guys updated to .net8 a few releases ago? everything was working fine up until the latest emby release which confuses me on the real issue

[Luke 42077]

Just now, RIP314 said:

am i wrong in thinking that you guys updated to .net8 a few releases ago? everything was working fine up until the latest emby release which confuses me on the real issue

4.8 runs on dotnet 6. 4.9 runs on dotnet 8.

[RIP314 2]

34 minutes ago, Luke said:

4.8 runs on dotnet 6. 4.9 runs on dotnet 8.

i guess i'm doing something stupid here, but I went to the old releases github page, I downloaded the zip file for an old server version (embyserver-win-x64-4.8.11.0), when I unzip it I get a system folder for emby, so I replaced my system folder in appdata with this old version, but it won't load, the emby logo pops up in the browser and nothing more happens. I tried removing the programdata, this triggers the wizard page, but again i just get the emby logo and nothing else happens, what am I doing wrong?

[Clackdor 109]

15 minutes ago, RIP314 said:

i guess i'm doing something stupid here, but I went to the old releases github page, I downloaded the zip file for an old server version (embyserver-win-x64-4.8.11.0), when I unzip it I get a system folder for emby, so I replaced my system folder in appdata with this old version, but it won't load, the emby logo pops up in the browser and nothing more happens. I tried removing the programdata, this triggers the wizard page, but again i just get the emby logo and nothing else happens, what am I doing wrong?

If you upgraded from 4.8 to 4.9 then you won't be able to downgrade back to 4.8 since there are numereous database and other changes that are incompatible. The only way to go back down to 4.8 is to either restore from a backup taken prior to the upgrade or to start fresh.

[RIP314 2]

21 minutes ago, Clackdor said:

If you upgraded from 4.8 to 4.9 then you won't be able to downgrade back to 4.8 since there are numereous database and other changes that are incompatible. The only way to go back down to 4.8 is to either restore from a backup taken prior to the upgrade or to start fresh.

starting fresh is fine, but how? I don't see an old server .exe file anywhere, I explained the github thing unless I'm missing something I can't seem to find an .exe file for an old version

 

[Suliamu 36]

Please remove

Edited October 22, 2025 by Suliamu

[RIP314 2]

26 minutes ago, Suliamu said:

Please remove

please remove what?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

3 hours ago, RIP314 said:

I screwed this up and for some reason I cannot get the mistaken quote. I will make a new post and the mods can delete this one.

Edited October 22, 2025 by Gilgamesh_48

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

3 hours ago, RIP314 said:

starting fresh is fine, but how? I don't see an old server .exe file anywhere, I explained the github thing unless I'm missing something I can't seem to find an .exe file for an old version

 

starting fresh is fine, but how? I don't see an old server .exe file anywhere, I explained the github thing unless I'm missing something I can't seem to find an .exe file for an old version

To remove Emby before a fresh start you do that the same way that you would delete any program.

Left click on the program's icon
Choose remove from the dropdown
The next step may change a bit from what I do because my system's menus behave a little weird at times.
Find Emby in the resulting list
Left click on its icon.
Then choose delete from the diaglog
Then  choose "delete all traces"
When the remove program is finished then just install get the Emby installer from the Emby website run it and you should be golden.

[Suliamu 36]

The EmbyServer.exe is inside the .7z-file of the corresponding release.  
And the releases can be found on github. 
When you cannot see it, check the options of your 7z-extracting-program and filemanager in your operating system. 

 

 

[Luke 42077]

@RIP314please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[RIP314 2]

On 10/22/2025 at 3:10 PM, Luke said:

@RIP314please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

I actually found an old .exe on a previous drive and was able to make it happen, the problem now is that despite automatic update being turned off it still updated, so now I have to once again rebuild my libraries.

[Luke 42077]

What do you mean by "make it happen" ?

[RIP314 2]

make it happen = install older version of Emby, which in previous posts I mentioned I had been struggling with.

[Luke 42077]

OK did the mklinks behave differently?

[RIP314 2]

On 11/6/2025 at 10:03 AM, Luke said:

OK did the mklinks behave differently?

Yes, once I was able to get the older version of Emby working everything was fine, but like I said Emby automatically updated despite the automatic update feature being toggled off. This is a big problem considering now I'm going to once again have to wipe emby again in order to roll-back my version...again.