11.0.0 screen saver crashing multiple apps!!!
Since 11.0.0 the built in screen saver, Roku authored ones, are crashing several apps and causing all kinds of problems including at times a bad flashing screen. So far it’s crashing my BritBox and X...
Forum Discussion
You seem to have hit on the issue(s).
I read your post carefully, multiple times, and did the following:
With power on (gulp), removed the HDMI cable and SD card, reattached HDMI cable.
Did a 'Reset to default theme'.
Did the 'soft reset / clear cache' (Home*5 Up*1 RW*2 FF*2)
After the reboot, I removed power, 'Quick format' the SD card in Windows, reinserted it, applied power.
After the cold boot, the Roku prompted to Format the SD card. (I should note that the screen was glitching like *CRAZY* during this step!).
Upon completion, I did a Settings /System /Restart.
So far so good. All the SS functionality seems to have been restored. I also *think* I'm seeing an extra/new screen repaint when coming out of the SS.
Perhaps as a side benefit, the Netflix app, which had been getting slower and slower since the OS 11 upgrade (including randomly dropping subtitles during playback) is also back to normal (yeah!).
PS - FWIW, I think there are actually multiple issues here, two which relate to the SDcard and one which relates to some sort of changed video buffer handling in OS 11.
Since you have a Roku 2 plugh, that may be why your Roku was extra finicky when formatting the SD card. But removing the HDMI while the Roku is powered on shouldn't harm the Roku -- much like it doesn't harm a computer or a TV because it's low voltage. An HDMI cable is unlike a SCSI cable in which you have to have the device powered off when removing and adding it since that's a higher voltage. Although, I saw when Googling that if you have a PS4 that you should turn that off first, but hot plugging a Roku should be fine. I haven't seen anything that said it's a problem, and I've been doing it without issue. I guess I could add in the instructions that one could un-plug their Roku before removing the HDMI and SD card, but I'm unsure if it's okay to remove the SD card when the Roku is off (kind of a catch-22). It might be okay -- I just haven't tried it.
The issue you may have run into was having to format your SD card after turning the Roku on (applying power). I know that after turning on my Roku devices (plugging them in), it takes them up to an extra minute for them to fully power up. Sometimes nothing works until the Roku is fully booted even though I see the home screen, so your Roku may have been working really hard to power up and also format the SD card. It could also have just updated as they do sometimes when booting up -- so then you would have had three forces working against you -- the boot, the update being applied, and the format, which caused your Roku screen to act funky. Another reason it could have done that is that Roku was finally able to apply the screensaver patch that it couldn't before due to the SD card conflict, and that may have been the issue.
Perhaps by keeping the Roku on while inserting the SD card to format it would have prevented that issue (but then you would have to hot plug the HDMI in while the device is on), or perhaps updating the Roku before turning it off would have prevented the screen glitches. I'm not saying you have to do this, at least not right now, but if you want, you can test my theory when your SD card begins to slow your Roku again by reformatting it in the Roku after formatting the SD card in a computer, but this time have the Roku on and see if it does the glitchy screen -- I don't think it will. But then, when reformatting the SD card again -- at a later time, turn off the Roku as you had and then insert the SD card and turn on the Roku and see if you re-experience the glitchy screen. Then again, try turning your Roku off before removing the HDMI and the SD card and see if that matters because it may be safer to not hot-plug an older model (I dunno). You might not have this issue at all if it was due to Roku applying the update that fixed the OS 11 issues, as now the screen shouldn't glitch no matter what (at least not until the SD card starts acting up again after an OS update or a channel update). Then again, perhaps your Roku 2 is just finicky because it's an old model. My Roku 3 was much more finicky than my Ultra when it comes to the SD card issues.
I'm thinking now that my Roku models may not have been fixed the first time around just because they didn't update before I restarted it, so I'll change the instruction to include updating since your model appears to be working after doing this one time. It's kind of an extra step because most Rokus will update when restarted. And perhaps I'll also include clearing the cache as that may have been what fixed the issue as well since I didn’t do that the first time either as you did.
I had noticed that Netflix would show the subtitles after the person spoke, so I'll see if that fixed this as well the next time I watch Netflix.
I'm not sure what you mean when you see "an extra/new screen repaint when coming out of the ss." Do you mean when you're on the home screen, or when you're in the channel, or when you're watching a movie/show, or all the above? The Roku 2 might be slow in certain ways, unlike newer Roku devices, when leaving the screensaver and it may take a moment for the screen to readjust, or perhaps since you had the SD card in there for so long without reformatting it, it was causing color fading issues which may now be resolved. My Roku 3's colors were faded compared to my Ultra, which may have been due to an SD card issue (I didn't even think of that). This would mean there's really no reason to upgrade if you're happy with your Roku 2 as long as you keep up with SD card maintenance.
Roku should really provide us with instructions on SD card maintenance (reformatting the SD card after every OS/channel update if problems occur), which would fix a lot of issues people have, but instead, Roku just abandoned the SD card slot altogether in their newer models. Perhaps this was because it was causing so many issues, and worse, no one would think of it being the SD card since many models don't come with the micro-SD card slot, and the SD card is easy to forget once it's inserted.
Just remember that anytime your Roku begins to glitch that it's all likely to be the SD card, which needs to be reformatted. You shouldn't have to upgrade your Roku until it starts behaving like my Roku 1 (SE), in which certain channels are no longer compatible with it -- like the Amazon Prime Video channel, and it's so slow since that model didn't come with a micro-SD card slot, but the Roku 2 sounds much like the Roku 3. So why upgrade if it continues to work? My Roku 1 is slowly becoming a brick, much like my ancient models, but the Roku 2 and up seems to be fine, and hopefully, we can continue to use our older models for another ten or more years. Or at least until history repeats when Roku radically changes their home screen one day, meaning all older models may become bricks like what happened to the ancient models I have when Roku last did this.
I think that regardless if there is a glitch or not, every time the Roku OS updates in the future, I'll just repeat all these steps if it means my Roku will be more efficient as there popped up so many issues that I wasn't even aware of -- like the Netflix subtitle glitch (which could have been screensaver related even though Netflix (and Hulu) patched their screensaver). I do know that this screensaver glitch had affected all Roku models (unsure about the newer ones) up to a point, so reformatting the SD card in the future may not resolve everything the first time around until Roku patches their OS updates when future glitches occur.
I don't know what can be done about the video buffer except what I read one user did, which was to lower the screen resolution to 720p. I'm not having any buffering issues while watching the movie/show. If it's constantly buffering while you're trying to watch a movie/show, then that's another issue. If it takes longer for the Roku to buffer the movie/show before it comes on, I'm willing to wait those extra few seconds rather than lowering my screen resolution or upgrading my Roku. As it could be that your Roku 2 is slow because it's old, and it may take a little longer to start the movie/show at the beginning and after the screensaver goes off. Unfortunately, with each OS update, your older model may become slower and slower when waiting for the device to reload and then when loading channels, movies, and shows.
I'm glad I was able to help,
--Portalogem
I believe my 4210x is exactly the same hardware as your 'Roku 3' (4200x), except an infared remote.
https://developer.roku.com/docs/specs/hardware.md
Don't know about any patch. My OS is still shows 11.0.0 4193-04.
re: Netflix, It is something that had gotten progressively worse since OS 11. Lately, it could take 5+ seconds to get a response to a key press in the menu. That's about when I noticed random subs go missing during playback; hitting the replay button they would usually show 2nd time through. Altogether, my reaction was "something is sucking cpu cycles". Now it's responsive again, and no missing subs.
re: extra repaint - I'm sure you observed it, you just didn't think about it. Example: before, when SS kicked in while at, say, the Roku Channel app, and you hit a keypress, the screen would 'freeze' (movie magic ss) or go to black (digital clock). However, the SS had actually been terminated - the next keypress would get delivered to the app even though the app wasn't visible. Now, when the SS is terminated, I get a brief black screen, and then the underlying app screen gets redrawn. Note that I am making a distinction. Before OS 11, the box *behaved* as if the video buffer was switched, the SS painted it's screen, and when the SS was terminated, the buffer was switched back (fast switch). I suspect that's also why things were screwy like seeing parts of both buffers, when the underlying app was doing refreshes / updates of IT'S frame buffer at the same time the SS was. Now it's as though the SS is getting it's own viewport, and the app is sent an 'expose' event when SS is terminated. But all of the above is conjecture, based upon what I'm seeing and my personal software and OS background.
re: Boot time glitches I observed during reformat: I don't know anything about the Roku kernel, but to have SDcard IO during the format have ANY impact on the hardware based screen updates implies some horrendous interrupt handling or perhaps some uncoordinated polling loops. All I know is it was really ugly.
Anyway, thanks for your post. The sequence I distilled from it for my unit seems to have things working (though I'll have to wait to see if Netflix starts gradually degrading again). I can now play audio streams (Tune-in, etc) and have the screen saver kick in (Clock) without all kinds of glitches / flashes, and terminating a SS in other apps doesn't leave the box it some weird video state...
I'm unsure how threads are solved, so for the OP and members of the community that are having this issue, here is a quick link to the solved portion of this thread:
How to Fix The Screensaver OS 11 Glitch -- 2022 (h... - Roku Community
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My original reply to plugh:
I updated my post to include that if a user is hesitant about hot-plugging the HDMI cord to remove/add the SD card that it can be done after unplugging the Roku -- but it takes longer, and I haven't had any issues doing this. And I also incorporated the steps with clearing the cache and updating the Roku, and for anyone with older Rokus to try to exclude these steps to see if the fix still works and then comment if these steps aren't necessary. I already know with my parents Roku Ultra 2019 that I didn't clear the cache or manually update, and the fix worked. But I don't know if this would also be the case with older Roku models or if I had manually updated the device before removing the SD card, which would stop any automatic updates.
Oh, that heavy battery-intensive Roku 3 remote is sitting on my bottom shelf as I just use regular Roku remotes. Totally not worth having a Roku 3. I just got it because my cable company gave it to me for free through one of their deals else I probably would have gotten a Roku 2. I was ready to give up on Roku entirely since Roku bricked my ancient Roku device that I was quite happy with, especially since it didn't show ads, but after receiving a free Roku, I was a happy Roku customer again.
The patch was included with a prior system update because all of my and my parents' Roku devices that didn't have SD card slots were suddenly fixed, but the problem was that the SD-card prevented the patch from working. After removing the SD card, a newer system update wouldn't fix it; I'm guessing it's because Roku already attempted to apply the patch from a prior system update when it was applying the gravity locks or whatever it says when doing a manual system update, so it wouldn't try to re-apply the patch again. But for some reason, after restoring the default theme, the patch was either re-introduced through updating the system, which allowed the patch to re-download, or perhaps by restoring the theme to default, this caused the Roku to reset its ability to apply the one time patch, but this time since there was no SD card, the patch worked.
It sounds to me like when Netflix updated on your device, the cache on the SD card interfered with the new format, and due to conflicts, it slowed things down. I think I had a similar issue, but it wasn't as severe as what you were going through. Again I don't use my Roku 3 all that much, so I could have had the same issue as you. One thing I like about the Ultra 2018 is that it doesn't glitch nearly as much with the SD card as my Roku 3 did with its slow-down issues and boot issues -- but perhaps Roku fixed the boot issues in newer updates. Since both Roku devices glitch with the SD Card, the differences between Roku devices are moot as a reformat of the SD card fixes both devices the same, and since the glitch is more pronounced with the Roku 2/3, it's easier to tell that it's an SD card issue and not a channel issue. Such as, I noticed the wallpaper flickering on the Roku 3 but not the Ultra, which would just freeze the screen.
I see what you're saying about the "repaint." I think it was different for my Roku Ultra because it has a faster processor. Before OS 11, the Amazon Prime Video channel would just go blank when the screensaver was supposed to come on with every Roku. After OS 11 on the Ultra, the Prime Channel screen would show a blank box on the left side, and upon pressing the remote, everything went black, and then the screen would eventually return. On the other channels, the screen would freeze, and when clicking the remote, it would come back. It may have been slower on the Roku 2/3, showing a "repaint" of the screen because with the Ultra the screen would jolt back into place, but unlike the Roku 3, the in-channel screen would then stutter when selecting various movies/shows. I didn't try different screensavers to see how they would behave -- I just used my Roku Clock screensaver, so maybe the different screensavers would have a different effect when the issue would stop the screensaver from activating. After the fix, the Amazon Prime Video channel shows the raining Rokus as the screensaver no matter the selected screensaver. I don't know if that's a glitch with that channel since it's not showing my selected screensaver, I might be annoyed if I paid for a screensaver that I couldn't see on that channel, but I'm just happy that my Roku goes to screensaver.
The SD card was notorious with boot time issues, such as sometimes my Roku Ultra (after a channel update) will boot for five minutes, and my Roku 3 would just sit there with the animated boot screen for 20 minutes or longer. The Roku 3 would sometimes boot and then restart and repeat, or it would enter the start screen and freeze and then restart and repeat. You might not have these issues since your boot screen isn't the same as the Roku 3 with the animations and the sounds -- you can check out the Roku 3 boot screen on Youtube if you're interested. Upon removing the SD card, all boot issues were resolved. I'm uncertain if that was a boot issue when you were reformating the SD card. It could have been an issue that the Roku was finishing its boot cycle while the home screen appeared -- my Ultra's screen just momentarily freezes until the boot cycle completes, and my Roku 3 is very slow until the cycle completes. It could be because it did a system update while booting, and it's finishing that up because this issue doesn't always happen. Reformating the SD card while it's completing a boot/update cycle could be putting a strain on the Roku. Or perhaps when it's reformating and going to screensaver -- this is strain enough on its resources. When mine was going to screensaver, I would quickly tap the remote button to stop the screensaver, and it took a moment to go back to the format SD card screen. It's probably just system intensive to format an SD card. Well, as long as it didn't cause your Roku to crash, then glitchy screensaver during formating isn't too problematic. Perhaps the best thing to do is to increase the screensaver time to 30 minutes before doing a format if you see this happen again. I could include that in the directions, but I think it's easier just to click on the Roku remote and exit the screensaver when it comes up during formating. We're using the same Roku clock screensaver, so it can't be because of a more memory-intensive screensaver. After I tapped the remote on my Roku 3 and Ultra, the screensaver would fluctuate some before going back to the formating screen, but I didn't think anything of it since I assumed that reformating is just system intensive. The same thing happens to me when I'm manually updating the system, the screensaver comes on, and I tap on the remote to go back to the update screen.
Unfortunately, due to experience, all the glitches will usually return after a system update or an OS update, or during boot when a system update interferes with the SD Card's cache when trying to install, so boot time could take longer, but an SD card reformat will fix this every time. The glitches may not come back all at once and kind of creep up on you as they did over time. I've tried workarounds such as removing the SD card and putting it back in, but the problems instantly returned, so the only way to fix this is to reformat the SD card. But it's still worth having that SD card because it speeds up the Roku when there are no conflicts. My Roku express plus that I use on my older SD TV (which I had to purchase to replace the slowly bricking Roku 1 (SE)) is very slow sometimes when loading channels because it doesn't have a micro-SD card slot. Sometimes the error is in the channel and not the SD card, so the thing to look for is the screen stuttering (which doesn't occur on the Ultra) or if things go really wonky with all your channels, or if googling the issue provides no results since no one thinks of the SD card. I've just been dealing with these SD card issues for years, and I should have known that this was the culprit and acted on it sooner. In prior years other people posted to check the SD card if an issue appeared, but this was more complex since removing the SD card didn't immediately solve the issue, and nothing would have been solved until Roku did that update that applied the patch for all the other Roku models -- just not models with SD cards in them. Roku might not have applied this patch till sometime in the past two weeks. This issue was so complex and major due to potential screen fade-in that I felt the need to post it once I figured it out and tested this solution on three Roku devices with SD cards.
I tried another potential workaround to avoid removing the HDMI cord: putting the SD card in an external USB writer and inserting that into the Roku USB slot so the card would be easier to remove, but that didn't work. I guess the USB slot is just for sideloading videos, music, and pictures.
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