Hey fellow Roonies,
Are you tired of constant freezing, stalling, and even crashing? What if I told you that, for the low low price of $99.99.99, I’ve developed a patented formula to rid your problems for GOOD!?.. (I’ll see myself out).
Ok, but for real, I was annoyed enough by this same issue that I found the thread, tried a few solutions, and likewise none of them worked. In an exercise of lateral thinking, I’ve found an easy-peasy work around that has been functioning perfectly for a few days here. I emphasize that this isn’t a solution to the core problem, but a functional side-step.
Here we go: Try opening a second desktop, which is a function built into Windows 11. There should be an icon built right in to the taskbar that looks like a square overlapping another square. Dedicate this second desktop exclusively to Roon; you can even enter full screen mode. Now you can switch between your ‘main’ desktop and your ‘Roon’ desktop by pressing win+ctrl+left or win+ctrl+right. You can also hover over or click the ‘square over square’ icon again in the taskbar to switch.
You can further on this if you want, like I did because I’m a nerd, and bind those shortcut keys to something else to make it even more convenient. For example, I bound the ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ buttons on my mouse (usually located where your thumb rests) to be the win+ctrl+left and win+crtl+right command… So now I only have to tap those two buttons with my thumb to instantly switch between Roon and the rest of the universe.
I tested this for a few days before posting here to make sure it works. I’m happy to report that there are absolutely no freezes or crashes, nor are there even any minor stalls when focusing back to Roon… even if I switch over after an hour or two of having not focused on it. This is, of course, true for my particular hardware, and may not work equally as well for others – not sure, but worth a try!
Why I think this works, and what gave me the idea in the first place, is that the core problem appears to be a resource management conflict between Windows and Roon. Windows must allocate it’s resources differently between multiple desktops than it does for minimized apps within the same desktop. I’m imagining that Windows is trying to shave off allocated memory and processing power while Roon is minimized, sort of putting it into a light sleep mode… or at least trying to. This may work with most apps, where Windows will fully re-allocate necessary resources immediately when they are re-focused… but Roon must function in a way where it doesn’t like to be ‘put on ice’ so to speak, and rather relies on a stable amount resources. Interestingly, the playback always worked fine while Roon was minimized, and it wasn’t until we tried to maximize and re-focus that the freezing occurred… this suggests the issue is tied to the GUI and graphics rendering, perhaps. I don’t know really – just spitballin’ here based on what I’ve observed.
Anywho, I hope this helps a few people here. I have a Paypal account where I will gladly accept contributions for all my hard work… whew! (kidding again, and now I’ll see myself out for real).