Playback stops within a few minues

I am experiencing an issue which appeared as soon as I updated Roon last night. Playback on my Win 10 PC stops after a few minutes. I narrowed down the problem to the windows firewall. Once I turn the firewall off, the problem disappears and Roon works without issues. If i reactivate the firewall, the problem returns and roon playback stops after a few minutes.

I have checked and ensured that roon is allowed access through the firewall:

I also tried uninstalling and then re-installing Roon on my Win 10 PC.

I had no issues at all until last night when I updated Roon to the latest version.

Not sure if I have missed something. Would you be able to help?

Many thanks
Yiannis

Hello @Yiannis_Kouropalatis — Thanks for sharing your report with us!

To start, please provide a brief description of your current setup using this link as a guide. Make sure to describe your network configuration/topology, including any networking hardware currently in use, so we can have a clear understanding of how your devices are communicating.

Since the update, have you tried rebooting your Core machine, and affected remote devices and endpoints, and any relevant networking hardware?

Is this behavior occurring for all endpoints or just specific ones?

Thanks,
Dylan

Hi Dylan

Many thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Good news is that the problem appears to have resolved itself. I did indeed previously tried rebooting the core (installed on Macbook Pro 13) as well as the endpoint (Windows 10 PC). I also rebooted the router but at the time the problem persisted. It was only affecting the Windows 10 PC based endpoint and it seemed to be directly affected by the Windows firewall (problem would disappear once firewall was deactivated but would reappear upon firewall reactivation). Nothing seemed to be helping at the time I was trying the above. Strangely though, this morning the problem has resolved itself and playback on the Win 10 endpoint is fine (even with firewall on).

Not sure how the issue was resolved but at least all is fine now.
Feel free to close this support request

many thanks
yiannis

1 Like

Hi again Dylan

Just wanted to share a final update regarding this issue. The problem actually reappeared a few hours after my last message and I was quite puzzled why. Windows firewall was definitely the issue (again). I would deactivate the firewall and all would be well. Once firewall was turned on then playback would stop within 4-5 minutes. The strange thing is that both raatserver.exe and roon.exe were shown as ‘allowed’ through the firewall (see screenshot at beginning of thread). hence why I was puzzled.
I finally resolved to trying running the ‘Network and Internet troubleshooter’ selecting the option ‘Incoming Connections’. The troubleshooter actually identified that Roon was not allowed through the firewall. The troubleshooter fixed / adjusted this and all is well finally.

So it appears that despite windows firewall showing Roon as ‘allowed’… it was not actually allowing it through. The troubleshooter seems to have fixed this.

I am sharing this in case it helps with others who might potentially run into similar difficulties.

Best
Yiannis

Hi @Yiannis_Kouropalatis

Thanks for sharing the resolution here! Glad you’re all up and running now. If you ever need anything else just let us know!

Regards,
Dylan

Hello again Dylan

I very sorry for bothering you again but it seems that the fix did not hold up. Everything seemed to work for a while but within a few hours the playback became problematic as before. It stops within 4-5 minutes and the Win 10 zone disappears for a few seconds before reappearing again. The problem only affects the Win 10 end point. All other endpoints seem to work without issue.

In case it helps, would like to draw your attention to the following:

  1. I ensure that Roon is allowed through the windows firewall:

  2. Despite this setting, playback stops within 4-5 minutes. I then try to run the troubleshooter which appears to identify an issue with incoming connections to Roon:

  3. The troubleshooter runs and appears to address the issue. It subsequently asks me to try running Roon again:

  4. I restart playback and select ‘I have completed this task’ to proceed:

This last message indicates that the issue has not been fixed unfortunately.
I confirm this by starting playback in Roon which unfortunately again stops after 4-5 mins. The same behaviour occurs: The Win 10 PC zone disappears, playback stops and the zone reappears after a few seconds.

The above problem disappears if I deactivate the windows firewall.

Any ideas?

many thanks

Hey there @Yiannis_Kouropalatis — Sorry to hear you’re still having troubles here.

Is there any chance you have pending Windows updates?

Additionally, check Firewall advanced settings for inbound and outbound rules and see if there are any deny rules in place for Roon or raatserver. There may be a rule in place there that is causing this behavior even though you have these marked as allowed.

Regards,
Dylan

Hi Dylan

Thank you for getting back to me about this. I can confirm that there are no pending windows updates. System is totally up to date.

Also I have double checked both incoming and outbound rules and I find that both ‘raatserver.exe’ and ‘roon.exe’ are are shown as 'Allowed. There is nothing listed in Outbound rules related to Roon.

Best
Yiannis

Another thing I just tried (with no luck): Completely uninstalled Roon from the Win 10 PC. Also accessed the windows firewall and manually removed all leftover instances of roon.exe etc.
Rebooted PC and then reinstalled Roon.
Unfortunately the problem reappears

Best
Yiannis

Hi Dylan, just wanted to provide a further update. I am experimenting with a number of things to try and debug the issue I am having. Last experiment: Selected to reset the windows firewall to defaults. I then uninstalled roon completely from my Win 10 PC and reinstalled. Seems to work for now… I will need to test it for a while see it this holds. Will update later.
Yiannis

… and the problem is back.

Playback stops exactly at 4:45. Very consistent

The windows firewall seems to be blocking Roon.

At this point I think I have ran out of ideas

Any help will be very appreciated

Yiannis

Thanks for the info @Yiannis_Kouropalatis!

Sorry to hear you’re still experiencing difficulties here. Is the network you’re on set as public or private? Depending on what type of network you’re on Windows Firewall will behave differently, which could be contributing to what you’re seeing here.

Additionally, if you go into advanced settings > monitoring > view active firewall rules, can you share a screenshot of what you see for Roon and RAATServer here?

Thanks,
Dylan

Hi Dylan

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I have finally managed to resolve this problem after bypassing the windows firewall completely. I installed the Bitdefender antivirus suite which essentially replaces the windows firewall. The problem disappeared as soon as I did that.

It is interesting and a bit concerning that the windows firewall creates this problem but at least there is a way to bypass it.

Best
Yiannis