error 004 received on updating
If you can successfully follow the steps below, you will not have to factory reset your Roku device. If your Roku device doesn't show the intrusive update screen, and you don't know how to manually update your Roku device, you'll find that information at the bottom of this post.
Intro:
This is an updated post after having visited with my parents who had different Roku devices than me. I decided to delete everything in this post that no longer applied to my prior situation as I had solved this issue on my device (Roku Express Plus 3910RW) and two of my parents' devices (Roku Express 3900) that were affected by this. The two that were of the same model (Roku Express 3900) weren't affected since they had auto-updated and restarted themselves a week prior after having been left on for months. So it's possible that if you leave your Roku alone when you see that update screen and just let it then automatically update, your Roku device may update the OS without any issues.
I don't know if the solution below works for all Roku device models, but this is how I solved this issue on the devices listed above.
The issue:
When I turned my Roku Express Plus on today, the Roku told me I had to update. After tapping the remote to allow it to update, the device then errored out and showed that blank wallpaper screen. When I turned on my parents' Roku Express devices and went to manually update them, the Roku OS update errored out and showed the same blank wallpaper screen.
This works! Thank you!
I’m responding to another post that gave great detailed instructions for other ways that may be needed to fix your Roku and do your update. 🙂
Roku will restart and go to the home page. 🙂
If clearing the cache (the remote control codes you posted prisher) corrects this error, please post what Roku device and model you are using, so that others know if this workaround will work on their (similar) devices. I'm hopeful this works on all Roku devices, but there's no way to know until people start posting what Roku devices they used to resolve this.
I figured out that the two Roku Express devices I was able to resolve by just clearing the cache were the Express 3900 models. The other two Roku Express 3900 models that were left on for months auto-updated to OS 14.5 and restarted themselves without any issues.
This wasn't enough with my Express Plus 3910(RW) as no matter what I did, I couldn't get past the update error, and my device kept crashing. For some reason, after I cleared the cache, that by forcing an update from that secret screen, and then selecting "cancel" did something to allow my Roku Express Plus 3910 to finally update to OS 14.5. So if anyone found that they needed to do this to force an update so that their Roku device (hopefully) then updated to OS 14.5, then please post that you had to access the secret screen after clearing the cache and what device you're using.
To find that code: if you can't find my post, you'll need to find the poster I got this information from by going to page 4 of this thread and looking for the 7th post which is coryleif who posted the remote control codes needed to access that screen. Also if this helps you, give that poster a bunch of kudos for helping all of us. I just can't thank that poster enough for getting my Roku Express Plus working again.
Update: I just realized that my post is easy to find since it's on the top of page 10 on this thread.
If anyone is not having this issue because their other Roku devices are staying on OS 14.1 like my Roku Ultra and Roku 3, I would advise them not to attempt to use the secret menu to force any updates as I'm leaving my devices alone until this is cleared up. I found that doing manual updates from the settings menu continues to update my channel apps without yet having that OS update screen pop up. You don't have to perform manual updates since Roku will automatically update your device at least once a day when it either is in standby mode with the screensaver on or when it restarts.
However, if error 004 ends up occurring on my other devices, I'll attempt to use these workarounds to see if I can get past this error on them and I'll post to this thread about that if or when that happens.
Update: So far my other Roku devices haven't updated to OS 14.5 (as of 4/21/25), so I'm thinking that Roku has put a pause on this OS update until this issue is resolved.
