Hi @Steven_Hecht,
Thanks for sticking with us. Before anything else: please don’t uninstall or reinstall anything again yet. Nothing is broken beyond repair, and another reinstall is the one thing that could actually put your library at risk. There are two things to untangle, and they’re related.
- The Storage screen, what you’re seeing is the problem, not a missing screen
When you said Storage shows “nothing there but .txt files,” that tells us exactly what’s happening. Settings → Storage lists watched folders, not albums. There is one entry there, and its path is:
C:\Users\steve
That’s your entire Windows user profile, your Desktop, Documents, Downloads, AppData, everything. So when you open it, Roon shows you the loose files sitting at the top of that folder, which is why you’re looking at .txt files instead of music.
This is a real problem, not cosmetic. Your diagnostics show Roon walking that whole profile and being refused by Windows system folders over and over, several times per second:
Cannot iterate dir: C:\Users\steve\PrintHood
Cannot iterate dir: C:\Users\steve\Recent
Cannot iterate dir: C:\Users\steve\SendTo
Cannot iterate dir: C:\Users\steve\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.IE5
Cannot iterate dir: C:\Users\steve\Documents\My Music
...
Those are hidden Windows compatibility links that always deny access, so Roon retries them endlessly. The result is that Roon spends its time crawling tens of thousands of non-music files instead of building your library, which slows the machine, keeps the scan from ever settling, and can pull stray files and images in as “music.”
To fix it:
- Open Roon → Settings → Storage
- Find the entry whose path reads
C:\Users\steve
- Click the three dots / gear to the right of it → Edit
- Point it at the folder where your music actually lives — most likely
C:\Users\steve\Music, or wherever your ripped CDs are kept
- Save
If editing it feels fiddly, do it the other way around: Add Folder → browse to your music folder → then Disable (or remove) the C:\Users\steve entry.
A screenshot of that Storage screen would help us confirm it’s set correctly.
- Why your playlists, Qobuz and settings “disappeared”.
Roon comes in two pieces:
- Roon (
Roon.exe) — the window you look at. It stores nothing.
- Roon Server — the piece that holds your library, playlists, Qobuz login, zones and every setting.
When you were told “You need to switch from SonicTransporter to STEVEDELLDESKTOP, your music and settings are safe,” both halves of that were true in a way that was easy to misread. Switching servers doesn’t move, copy or delete anything. It changes which library you’re looking at, like pointing a TV at a different channel.
What you connected to was a brand-new, empty Roon Server on the Dell. That’s why:
- You were prompted to sign up for Qobuz, a fresh server has no account attached
- Your playlists and settings are gone from view, they’re in the other server’s database, untouched
- Only your ripped CDs appear, that empty server ran first-time setup, and
C:\Users\steve got added as the music folder, so it found the CD rips sitting under it
That whole-profile Storage entry from item 1 is itself the evidence: a library you’d been running for years wouldn’t have been set up that way. It was created minutes ago by a first-time setup wizard.
So your instinct is right, the question is which server holds your real database, and we don’t want to guess and have you connect to the wrong one again.
Please do this and report back, without selecting anything:
- In Roon, go to Settings → General and click Disconnect next to the server name. That returns you to the “choose your Roon Server” screen.
- Stop there. Post a screenshot (or a phone photo) of that screen showing every server listed and any status text next to each one.
- Also let us know: is the sonicTransporter powered on, and can you reach it in a browser at
http://192.168.0.172? If your library lives on that box, it has to be running for Roon to see it.
- And check Settings → Backups on whichever server you can reach, if automatic backups were ever switched on, we can restore your playlists, Qobuz login and zone setup wholesale, which is the cleanest path of all.
Once we can see that list, we’ll tell you exactly which one to pick.
On your point about zones, you’re right that our earlier instructions read as a one-track-at-a-time answer, and that’s not what you were asking. Zones are just output destinations; your whole library plays to whichever zone you select, so nothing has to be “moved” into one. Let’s park that until you’re back on the right server and looking at your real library, and we’ll walk through it properly then.
One step at a time from here, and please hold off on any further uninstalling.
