NUC8i5BEH crashes upon connecting/disconnecting audio device

[eye]

Roon Core Machine

Intel NUC8i5BEH, 8GB RAM running Windows 10 Professional + Roon Server.

Networking Gear & Setup Details

NUC8 motherboard + Ethernet.

Connected Audio Devices

Chord Mojo WASAPI, USB
Bose Soundlink Mini II SE, BT

Description of Issue

I’m using my NUC8 as a headless Roon Server. Several times per day, I suddenly lose connection to this Roon Core. When I try to check what went wrong, by connecting a monitor either over HDMI or USB-C, I will get no signal from the device and I can no longer connect to the device using Remote Desktop. The power button LED stays on, but I can no longer shut the device down normally. I have to perform a hard shutdown by pressing the power button for 15 seconds (and losing some play data in the process).

This would appear to be an issue with the NUC unit. I’ve been looking for a cause with Intel Support for several weeks now, but just about every option appears to have been exhausted. The NUC is fully up-to-date, both BIOS-, (HDMI) Firmware- and driver-wise.

I’ve done some testing and found out the issue only occurs when Roon (Server) is running. It’s hard to reproduce the exact circumstances, but the issue often occurs when I either turn on or turn off my Chord Mojo - far from always, but often. Today it also occured just when my Bose Soundlink was about to connect over Bluetooth. Sometimes, it seems to occur when Roon has been idle for a while. The device just goes dark. I’m also pretty sure the issue has never occured while Roon was playing. I also cannot reproduce the issue when a monitor connected to my NUC and turned on.

All this leads me to suspect the issue has something to do with Roon, perhaps with the way in which it communicates with audio devices.

Could you look into this?

[Rugby (aka Daniel or Big Dan)]

Have you reviewed the Windows Logs found under Event Veiwer to see if there are error or warnings

[eye]

There are no log entries in the Windows Log in the 3 hours previous to the issue. Right afterwards, it has the following entires:
Error: The previous system shutdown at 12:44:43 on ‎03/‎12/‎2021 was unexpected.
Critical: The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

[eye]

I’ve taken up this issue with Chord. They advised me to uninstall both the ASIO and WASAPI driver and reinstall the WASAPI driver. Even though I wasn’t using the ASIO driver, this seems to have resolved the issue - I haven’t experienced any more crashes since.