Device not connecting to Prey

Prey is designed to keep your device connected to our servers all the time. However, there are certain moments where you could see your device as disconnected, while you know that it is on, and that can happen due to the following reasons:

Computer on sleep mode or no user has logged in

When in sleep mode, due to restrictions from the operating system, Prey may lose its connection to the server. However, it should get it back once the device is active.

A firewall, antivirus, proxy or security suite is preventing Prey from reaching your device

You’ll need to set exceptions on your software/hardware of choice, allowing Prey to have access to the following:

    • Whitelist C:\Windows\Prey\ for Windows devices and /usr/local/lib/prey/ for MacOS devices).
    • Allow C:\Windows\Prey\current\bin\node.exe access through ports 80 and 443.
    • Add the following list to your allowed sites:
      • solid.preyproject.com
      • panel.preyproject.com
      • control.preyproject.com
      • exceptions.preyproject.com
      • downloads.preyproject.com
      • preyproject.com
      • www.googleapis.com
      • prey.io

Your device is running an old version of Prey.

Prey should update itself on your device. However, due to certain restrictions from the OS, or due to an unexpected action while updating, your device may be running an unsupported version of the software. In order to solve this issue, the easiest thing to do is to re-install Prey. For this, please uninstall Prey, and then install it again.

For Windows and MacOS devices, we’ve prepared a file that can help you with this. For this solution, you will need your Setup Key, which you can find in your Prey panel, under Settings > Setups. Folllow the directions depending on your operating system.

      1. Download the installation repair file and execute it with administrator privileges. This can take several minutes, so please don’t close any command prompt window that may open. If the reinstallation failed, please execute the file from a command prompt with administrator privileges, appending your Setup Key the end (eg: preyreinstaller.exe setup_key)
      2. Download the installation repair file.

        From a terminal window, navigate to the folder where the file was downloaded and execute sudo sh InstallMacLatest.bash API_key. Enter your administrator password, required for sudo commands, and wait for the installation process to complete.

None of the above seem to solve the issue

Please contact our Support team with the following information:

      • The device_key for the device showing up as offline (you can find this is in the address bar of your browser when in the Device view).
      • If you have access to the device, please include the prey.log and prey.conf files from the device you’re attempting to locate. To extract these files, please follow these steps:
        • You can locate the prey.log and prey.conf files in the installation folder for the Prey client (by default C:\Windows\Prey)
        • Execute the following strings in a Terminal window:
          cat /var/log/prey.log
          cat /etc/prey/prey.conf
          Afterwards, copy and paste the information on a text file.

Our team will get in touch with you within 24 working hours.

Was this article helpful?

0 out of 1 found this helpful