This is not strictly a Roon question, rather a question about the computer on which I am running it (set-up details below). I run Roon on a W10 NUC that is attached directly to my router (a BT Home Hub 2) by ethernet. With increasing frequency the machine drops off the network and has to be hard-restarted via the on-off switch. My problem is I don’t know where to look to identify the cause; unlike my mac the NUC does not provide a crash report (as fas as I know) that will give me a clue as to the cause. I am hoping that someone with more knowledge of hardware/software diagnostics on PCs can point me in the right direction. Hardware/software set-up details below.
I checked Event Viewer the next time I noticed that the NUC had become unresponsive. I could see when the machine went down as there was nothing in the systems logs after that until I rebooted the NUC but at the same time nothing to indicate why the machine hung. Weird.
I have done bit more investigation and now believe that this issue is Roon-related, even if not directly Roon-caused. The background is given in my 1st post but since then my NUC has been crashing silently (no error message) about once a day. I experimented with just leaving the NUC on without running Roon for a few days and it is completely stable, which is what leads me to think that the failure is Roon-related.
When I review the logs I see two worrying things: Roon trying to reprocess the same files over and over again; Roon using more and more VM (up to: 01/10 07:10:19 Info: [stats] 9067mb Virtual, 3658mb Physical, 1381mb Managed, 2990 Handles, 88 Threads). But again there is no obvious error, either in Roon or event viewer. Can you help? Obviously I will upload whatever logs are helpful.
Thanks @wklie I will give that a try over the weekend, although I should add that since my last post on this topic the NUC has been running fine without Roon - it fails only when Roon is running.
@rugby you asked if I could just remove the files that get rescanned from my library. I could do that but I wonder if it might not be simpler just to recreate my library from scratch. While I have been investigating this issue I have moved my Roon install to my mac desktop (which has 64gb of memory so more than enough…) and rebuilt the library from scratch and that also has been very stable.
My plan of attack therefore is to 1 run memtest and if no errors then 2 rebuild the library from scratch on the NUC. Unless that is anyone has a better suggestion.
Thanks @noris. I have moved my Roon core to a different machine while I conducted some other testing so I will need to move it back and will send logs when/if it crashes.
@wklie Peter, I ran the memory checker you suggested for 16 hours (4 batches of 4 hours on the free version) and no errors were reported.
Where is the Roon Core running from when it crashed? The original i7 NUC or “the different machine”?
How do you know it actually crashed, or just dropped off from the network? A few posts above you said “hung”, which is different from a crash. When a PC hangs, the screen freezes and the mouse cursor cannot move. When it crashes, it shows an error dialog or a blue screen of death if you disabled Windows reboot on crash.
A while ago it was proven Home Hub 4 could not support Roon. The solution was to change to a Smart Hub 2. However, if you Roon Core really crashed, then it’s not caused by the router.
Thanks for your reply and your continued interest in my problems.
To respond to your questions…
Where is the Roon Core running from when it crashed? The original i7 NUC or “the different machine”?
the NUC
How do you know it actually crashed, or just dropped off from the network? A few posts above you said “hung”, which is different from a crash. When a PC hangs, the screen freezes and the mouse cursor cannot move. When it crashes, it shows an error dialog or a blue screen of death if you disabled Windows reboot on crash.
I run the NUC ‘headless’ so it is difficult to know if it is hanging or crashing. When this happens, the NUC becomes inaccessible from the network and the fan goes haywire. When I restart the machine, there is nothing in Event Viewer to tell me what happened, other than a message that I restarted the machine after an improper system shutdown. So probably hanging…
A while ago it was proven Home Hub 4 could not support Roon. The solution was to change to a Smart Hub 2. However, if you Roon Core really crashed, then it’s not caused by the router.
Apologies for my inaccuracy - I have a smart hub 2, not a home hub 2.
Thanks for sending the logs and for your patience while we’ve had a chance to review them.
There are no signs of Roon crashing in the logs, it looks like it ended normally, but there is one interesting thing here, it appears that Roon attempts to import this file multiple times: \\ag-nas\music\my music\iTunes Music\Low\Drums and Guns\04 Dragonfly.mp3.
Can you try to move this file to somewhere Roon is not scanning and see if that helps with the issue? Note, please do not delete this file, because if it is the source of the issue we kindly request it for QA purposes. Thanks!
Thanks for your response. I will do as you request and see if it helps.
After I sent the logs, the NUC was stable for about 3 days, but it has crashed twice in the last two days. At this point I incline to @wklie’s view that there is a transient memory issue somewhere but have not been able to prove this using the memory checking tool that Peter recommended, which is a little frustrating. I’d like to do that before spending the cash on new memory.
Try this first:
Turn off Turbo Boost in BIOS setup.
I don’t recommend buying new memory at this point. To do further memory test, you can take out half the RAM and run Roon with it. If it still crashes, swap the RAM with the other half. This assumes you have more than one stick of RAM module.
So…turning off turbo boost made no difference. The NUC disappeared from the network within a couple of hours. I then left the NUC running for a couple of days without starting Roon. It was stable. Once I restarted Roon, the NUC became unavailable very quickly, again within a few hours.
It is probably time for me to put my hand in my pocket…