I’m having some Roon related issues that I cannot sort out, so any @support help will be greatly appreciated.
The issue:
Periodically, when playing songs in Roon (almost always when choosing to start something new, never just moving from track to track after play has been pressed), the whole computer crashes to a blue screen with a kernel related error. The computer then resets. This happens usually about every 30 minutes that I use Roon.
It happens whether I am accessing a song via Tidal, or via my local drive. It happens from the desktop; it happens from the android app.
What I have tried:
I tried moving all of my files to an external hard drive.
I reinstalled windows and then reinstalled Roon.
Hardware Setup:
Windows 10 Home 10.0.1134
HP Slimline Desktop PC
270-p024
Intel® Core™ i7-7700T CPU @ 2.90GHz, 2901 Mhz, 4 Core(s)
12 GB Ram
This computer (running Roon core) is hardwired to the network, but it is a part of a larger home wifi network, using Google Wifi.
Software setup
Roon Version 1.5 build 363 64 bit
Roon is accessed on the server itself; also via Android apps on two separate Google Pixel 2 phones. The issue happens on all devices.
Tidal:
Using Tidal premium (not lossless).
Library: Have around 21k tracks of varying types stored on the CPU as well as an external backup. No issues processing or indexing all of the tracks that I know of.
While we’re waiting for the Support team to show up, I was curious to see that you say you are running version 10.0.1134 of Windows 10. That’s a strange version number, and not one that I recognise.
When the blue screen occurs, what exactly is the error message that is being reported on the screen? That might help the support team. Thanks.
Thanks for contacting support, I have done some research regarding that Windows 10 Home version 10.0.1134 and have found the following threads online which describe similar Blue Screen of Death reports to what you’re seeing and it appears that this issue is not localized to Roon:
These issues stem from drivers issues as Roon won’t crash the Operating System. According to the first thread linked, this issue may be with your Network Driver so I would start taking a look at the drivers installed n your computer. Hope this helps.
Second, as has been noted, Roon itself doesn’t cause kernel failures, since Roon doesn’t run in the kernel (to the best of my knowledge). A driver handling a Roon request (I/O the most likely type) could cause a kernel failure, so knowing the BSOD code could pinpoint a driver.
Thanks, Geoff. The error is “Unexpected Kernel Mode Trap.” I do recall it was something different before I reimaged my computer, but I cannot recall what it was prior.
This (127 or 0x7F) would appear to be UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP due to double fault (0x8 in the first parameter). Common causes for such are a kernel stack overflow and a hardware problem. I’d guess the former.
You will need to provide a kernel dump to Roon support. The dump should help in clarifying what’s going on.
If your hardware checks out aok, then it is a bad hardware driver that is causing this issue. The HP website will also have the latest and correct drivers for your system also.
Note: Other Updated Drivers will be required for non HP hardware such as printers and or other USB devices connected to the system. If you have a 64 Bit system, then make sure that it is 64 Bit drivers and the same for 32 Bit if this is what you have.
Really hard to bluescreen w10 without a driver or hardware issue. I’d look there first, the roon software may do a call that triggers it but it will be the called procedure rather than roon doing it.
BSOD is not exclusively a hardware issue. In fact, more often it is a software issue. (I worked at Microsoft in kernel support and investigated many, many kernel issues, including BSODs.)
Since this crash occurs only when the play button is pressed, you may want to take a look at your audio drivers installed on the computer. If there is a proprietary driver installed, it would be worthwhile to verify if the system still experiences the same issue when just using the Windows provided driver.
You can optionally also try to disable Exclusive Mode for that zone and see if that has any effect on the crashes.
The Wikipedia article is, in my opinion, incorrect in saying (under “Windows NT”) that a BSOD is usually caused by “an illegal operation being performed,” which Wikipedia via a link (to “general protection fault”) defines as an access violation. In support of my opinion, there is Windows Internals, sixth edition, Mark Russinovich et al, part 2, pp 548-551. In particular, “Causes of Windows Crashes,” pp 549-551, gives the top Windows 7 crash causes (91% of the total) as page fault, power management, exception and traps, access violations, display, pool, memory management, hardware, USB, critical object and NTFS file system. For what it’s worth: Although the book doesn’t say that the listed groups are in order of decreasing frequency, the hardware group comes after 7 groups and before 3 other groups. Finally, to be explicit, I view page faults, exceptions and traps, access violations and memory management errors as the result of software errors.
Thanks for the reply. I have been able to isolate it - the issue is linked to the driver for my Parasound Halo Integrated, which I have Roon using as an output through the server. I don’t know what to do, but the issue stopped occurring once I disabled the Parasound as a device.
This is a problem, primariliy b/c I use this as the engine for my speakers, etc, but for now Roon is only working on my sonos. Any advice?
Thanks, @MikeD. I had been using the parasound drivers using the wonky instructions from them.
Interestingly enough, two things from last night’s tinkering.
If I disable the parasound as an output in roon, but just do the standard windows drivers in roon “system output” it appears the problem is solved. Parasound would say I’m no longer getting the audio quality I could from them, but at least it’s working.
Thanks for confirming that the issue is with the Parasound driver. We can take a look at the Parasound driver, but if the issue subsides when the driver is not in use, then the Parasound driver is the one causing issues here, and not Roon.
Roon does not have the kernel access to cause a Blue Screen of Death crash like this, so I would recommend contacting Parasound directly regarding this issue to see if they can provide another driver or additional settings that need to be modified to have the driver work properly.