Roon Core is an i7 NUC / R.O.C.K. The core works fine, and I can stream music; I just can’t use the GUI on my laptop (need to use a different Remote to control streaming to my laptop).
Networking Gear & Setup Details
My router is an ASUS ROG something-or-other (1-2 year old 8 antenna gaming router). Network does not seem to be the issue since the Core is operational and most of my Roon ecosystem works fine.
Connected Audio Devices
The primary audio output from my laptop is an RME ADI-2 connected via USB in WASAPI exclusive mode. When I open the Roon app on my laptop the GUI never loads, but other remotes can see and stream to this endpoint.
Number of Tracks in Library
38,988 tracks
Description of Issue
After a Windows Update, Roon fails to open on my laptop. I tried to roll back the update unsuccessfully–it automatically reapplied the update after undoing it (gg). I also tried going back to a system restore point before the update and that also failed with Windows-specific errors. I rebooted a couple times and reinstalled the Roon app, but am still seeing the same symptoms: The Roon window is a plain white screen with a spinning circle; it appears to be hung.
I followed troubleshooting steps from the following page as best as I could:
After reboot and reinstall, I confirmed the firewall settings are fine and tried to update my graphics driver. My laptop is getting somewhat old at this point (Windows 10, 980 desktop graphics card) and doesn’t have a new driver available. I didn’t attempt the .NET Framework install since I’m unsure which version I should try.
Eventually I made it to checking the logs, which did not contain any clearly obvious error messages that I noticed, but did report a number of successful steps that implied services were running and working over the network. On a whim I tried my tablet and discovered my laptop’s ADI-2 WASAPI endpoint is visible, and I can stream to it!
So the problem seems to be in loading the GUI for the Roon app itself on the laptop. However, I’m not sure what might cause that or how to recover from it since uninstall / reinstall doesn’t do it, and I don’t know what to look for in logs / Event Viewer, etc. Nothing jumped out at me, but it’s also entirely possible I overlooked something.
Tried that, but it didn’t work. Did a fresh install direct from NVidia, but the blank GUI in Roon persists. (New driver did fix an issue I had with a game, though).
Which Windows update was it? I am getting the same blank GUI (but can control it from another computer) on one that got latest Windows 11 Insider build. Updating video driver doesn’t help, but the problem is likely in Microsoft breaking something…
Yes, I did an uninstall first, then visited the downloads section here to do a fresh install.
Yes, and I mentioned that in my original post:
The log is quite long. If there is a line about the GUI I could have easily overlooked it. If there is something specific to look for I can check again, but just scanning for signs of trouble I didn’t catch anything. I did, however, see that services were starting correctly and communicating fine with the Core, then I confirmed that I can stream to devices connected to the laptop as long as the Roon app is running–I just can’t use the app on the laptop because there is no GUI. Title bar for the window says “Not Responding.”
I didn’t look at Core logs, but don’t expect that would reveal anything since the Core is clearly communicating with my laptop as well as the rest of my Roon network. If I close the Roon app on my laptop I can see from my tablet that the laptop endpoints are no longer available. Restart the app and they show up again. So, communication between the app and the Core seems to be working fine.
MSI GT72; it’s over 5 years old, so it’s not surprising that it might have some issues running very new stuff; Windows reports that it’s not “Windows 11 compliant,” for example, but I’m still running Windows 10 (21H2). Generally speaking it’s still quite a capable machine (32GB RAM, 980 desktop card, and still runs most modern games).
Honestly, “Microsoft breaking something” is 100% my expectation. I had this happen once before with a different patch that I had to manually uninstall a couple times. Subsequent patches were OK. This time uninstalling the patch failed, because, well, Microsoft. Since the obvious impact seems limited to Roon so far I’m hoping there is a way to recover without resorting to a full clean Windows install / wiping all the game and app installs I have on this machine.
So, I just uninstalled Roon a second time (after the graphics driver install) and had to manually delete everything under AppData to get it to fully clear. Following that + a reboot + a fresh install I have my GUI back. My endpoints are still present, too, which is nice.
Not sure what happened, but the uninstaller was stuck while trying to clear out the contents of the AppData folder. I manually removed everything under AppData/…/Roon via Windows Explorer; when I tried to just delete everything at once it acted like it was following a recursive loop / link (just kept endlessly tallying up files), which is probably what the app was doing as well while trying to start up. I canceled that and removed folders one by one at which point the uninstaller got unstuck and completed.
I thought I did a full uninstall the first time, but I won’t rule out that I might have left the AppData intact since that seems to be the default in the uninstaller. In any case, clearing the cache + database, etc., did ultimately resolve my GUI problem.
