Roon app on Windows 10 can't play music to directly attached speakers (ref#H52BDP)

John_Thoren · October 13, 2025, 4:35am

This is like groundhog day. I keep doing what you ask, and end up spending a lot of time, but ending up in the same place.

check:

there was/is no raatserver.exe process running.
roon and roonserver were both installed in my appdata, so I guess that’s per user.

fix:

starting roon as “administrator” made no difference - raatserver did not start
my account has r/w to those directories - it always has for each of the 5 roon reinstalls I’ve done in the past month.

I uninstalled roon completely again, downloaded the latest, installed it without issue ( the roon installer does not ask if it’s a per user for all users - it goes automatically to per-user).

No errors, not issues, and NO local speakers. Raatserver is not started either in the roon process group, or in background tasks.

raatserver.exe does exist on my machine.

PS C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application> dir
Directory: C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name

d----- 10/12/2025 9:13 PM 205501559
-a---- 9/17/2025 1:46 PM 163136 RAATServer.exe
-a---- 9/17/2025 1:46 PM 203 RAATServer.exe.config
-a---- 9/17/2025 1:46 PM 323904 RoonAppliance.exe
-a---- 9/17/2025 1:46 PM 203 RoonAppliance.exe.config
-a---- 9/17/2025 1:46 PM 323904 RoonServer.exe
-a---- 9/17/2025 1:46 PM 203 RoonServer.exe.config
-a---- 9/17/2025 1:46 PM 49 VERSION
PS C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>

If you need logs, please tell me which.

Thank you.

jt

John_Thoren · October 13, 2025, 4:37am

benjamin · October 14, 2025, 8:03pm

Thanks for giving all of that a try @John_Thoren - we have a ticket in with our development team for further analysis.

We’ll be in touch with more information as soon as they’ve been able to take a closer look. Thanks for your ongoing patience here!

John_Thoren · October 14, 2025, 8:24pm

Much appreciated!

j

benjamin · October 16, 2025, 10:01pm

Hey @John_Thoren,

Thanks for your patience! We were able to review your issue with our development team - and they’ve confirmed that RAATServer is downloading and installing properly, but is running into issues properly launching.

Let’s see if we’re able to launch in manually:

Open a terminal on your Windows machine running Roon Server:
- Option A — PowerShell: press Windows, type PowerShell, press Enter.
- Option B — Command Prompt: press Windows, type cmd, press Enter.
Copy one of these lines and paste into the terminal, then press Enter:
```
cd "C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application"
```
- (If that path is different for you, change thorenj to your Windows user name.)

Run RAATServer so output prints to the terminal

In PowerShell, run:

.\raatserver.exe -colorconsole

Or, In Command Prompt, run:

raatserver -colorconsole

Watch for log lines in the terminal
- If you see text appearing (errors, warnings, or ongoing messages), those are the logs we need.
Send the logs to us
- Easiest: click inside the terminal, select all text (Ctrl+A), copy (Ctrl+C), then paste into your reply (Ctrl+V).
- Or send a screenshot:
  - Press Windows + Shift + S to open the Snip tool, draw a rectangle around the terminal, then paste the image into your reply or save it.
  - Or press PrtScn to capture the whole screen, then paste into an email/chat or open Paint and save the file.

Let us know the results, thanks John!

John_Thoren · October 20, 2025, 5:01am

PS C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application> .\raatserver.exe -colorconsole
PS C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>

after 15 minutes, nothing more on the console. Some kind of strange ‘silent’ failure.

Same silent failure if I start raatserver.exe without the console switch.

Still no local speakers available in my audio zones.

I see a raatserver directory now, but the raatserver process is not starting. Attached are screenshots of taskmanager foreground and background roon-related processes, as well as:

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>ps -a | findstr oon
18192 1:03 RoonServer
21316 11:04 RoonAppliance
40308 0:19 Roon
C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>ps -a | findstr aat
C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>

The windows event viewer shows no errors or roon-related messages in the app, security or system logs.

Still stumped…

Thank you.

John_Thoren · October 20, 2025, 5:02am

noris · October 23, 2025, 12:28pm

Hello @John_Thoren ,

Thank you for the update. I am looking over your diagnostics and it looks like the same issue as before, that RAATServer is failing to start. Looking over the RAATServer logging, I can only see that it tries to start but fails, as if something is blocking it. Can you please try to temporarily disable your WAN connection and leave just the LAN active? Does that allow RAATServer to start and see the devices?

John_Thoren · October 27, 2025, 5:13am

I disabled the wan interface a couple of times, stopped microsoft defender, and raatserver still won’t start. No error, but the command prompt returns immediately - there is no pause as if the exe is hesitating. There is nothing in the windows event logs related to this.

I still cannot see my local speakers.

Same message in the logs, which I’m assuming you can see remotely.

10/26 22:03:04 Info: [raatserver] [runner] Start or Connect...
10/26 22:03:04 Info: [raatserver] [runner] Start or Connect... C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\Roon\Application\RAATServer.exe
10/26 22:03:04 Info: ConnectOrStartAndWaitForExit RAATServer, path: C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\Roon\Application\RAATServer.exe
10/26 22:03:04 Info: ConnectOrStartAndWaitForExit RAATServer: Try to connect to existing raatserver
10/26 22:03:04 Info: [raatserver] [runner] Status: Connected
10/26 22:03:06 Info: [stats] 2102821mb Virtual, 378mb Physical, 60mb Managed, 318mb estimated Unmanaged, 1156 Handles, 35 Threads

The command prompt log:

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>ipconfig
Ethernet adapter Ethernet 2:
   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
Ethernet adapter LAN 172.31.31:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::f475:b042:6efa:7ce8%4
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 172.31.31.69
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>raatserver -colorconsole

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>ps -a | findstr aat

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>ps -a | findstr AAT

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>time
The current time is: 21:57:00.91
Enter the new time:

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>raatserver -colorconsole

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>time
The current time is: 21:59:46.43
Enter the new time:

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>ipconfig
Ethernet adapter Ethernet 2:
   Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :

Ethernet adapter LAN 172.31.31:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::f475:b042:6efa:7ce8%4
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 172.31.31.69
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Ethernet adapter WAN 172.21.21:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::760d:dccb:1732:943a%17
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 172.21.21.69
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 172.21.21.1

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>raatserver -colorconsole

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>raatserver -colorconsole

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>raatserver -colorconsole

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>raatserver -colorconsole

C:\Users\thorenj\AppData\Local\RoonServer\Application>

Still stuck

Mike_O_Neill · October 27, 2025, 6:50am

Late to the party

Have you tried deleting the local audio and reboot the PC to get a fresh driver set. Windows update used to do this regularly a few years back

Ill walk you through it if you want to try

John_Thoren · October 27, 2025, 7:06pm

Mike, I’ve done that a few times. Thanks anyhow.

noris · October 31, 2025, 9:39pm

Hello @John_Thoren ,

Thanks for trying to disable the WAN interface via that test. We spoke to the team today regarding your report, and we were wondering if this could be a permissions issue due to the Windows user profile in use. If you try to temporarily create a new Windows user profile, do you still experience the same issue using that new profile?