Roku setup

[kcforreal]

Okay. This topic needs some explanation.

For the past 2 weeks the Roku Express apps for Pluto and Amazon Prime have not been working correctly. Attempts to enter Pluto result in being kicked out after a few seconds. As for Amazon Prime, I am able to get into my account and view my watchlist et al but when trying to play them, other than seeing Amazon’s short previews, all I get for video is a black screen with no sound although subtitles do work. This happens no matter what I try to watch.

3 days ago I experienced a 3rd problem with YouTube where no video thumbnails appear and where I simply cannot play any videos – a black screen appears and nothing happens.

Finally, no matter what I do the system time displayed is never correct.

To try to fix this I restarted Roku several times, deleted and reloaded the apps for Pluto, Amazon Prime and Youtube and made sure the Roku Express device has the most current update applied.

So, my current problem – after rebooting my router and modem I did a factory reset of the Roku Express device, was successful, logged onto my network successfully (not wifi, I’m hardwired to my router) and entered my email, which I entered several times and confirmed that not only is it correct but it’s also the email address I use for my Roku account and to which this forum topic is being generated from. But when I attempt to go further and get the activation email from Roku I get this error message:

“We’re sorry, the email you provided isn’t working”. I am NOT going to try another email address as I don’t have one and I should not have to since it’s the same email I’m signed up on Roku’s site with.

Can a Roku employee help me? I searched in your forum topics for a solution but none is applicable or worked. I have the serial number of the Roku Express handy and ready to go – thank you.

[kcforreal]

Update: Unexpectedly I finally got an activation email without being contacted by an employee about 20 minutes ago. After successful activation all my problems were resolved. I'm betting it was due to my rebooting of my router and modem as I had a similar but somewhat different problem last October that was fixed by doing that - here's what I did back then:

October 8, 2020

Several days ago I encountered problems with YouTube and Amazon Prime streaming on Roku on the TV downstairs.

YouTube - When I clicked on the icon, the screen would go dark and then the normal Roko main menu would appear again without any error messages.

Amazon Prime - Just really weird stuff. Initially you'd go in but there wouldn't be any images for content at all. Later the images appeared but when you clicked on anything there would be no video, just sound.

Fix - I disconnected both the router and the modem for 15 seconds, plugged them back in and that fixed it. WHY it did, I don't know exactly but the download speed increased from 26mbs to 33mps.

[Rrsanchez]

Our Roku went out yesterday, reset, restarted, reloaded every thing. Now all it says is we’re sorry the email you provided isn’t working. It’s worked forever because that’s all we have. Can’t log in at all. WiFi is fine, roku will not work. What’s wrong? 

[Rjfskelt04]

I'm having the exact same problem 

[kcforreal]

Rrsanchez: I posted the original topic you're replying to.

Yesterday, I left the TV screen on with the Roku message telling me my email wasn't working and giving the option to RETRY or RESEND, which I did several times after I was certain my email address was entered correctly. I finally gave up, wandered off to do some outside work for about 20 minutes, came back and then retried sending the email address from that screen - this time it immediately accepted my request and told me that the activation email had been sent.

Either someone from Roku addressed this problem on their side without me having communicated with anyone nor given them my Roku device's serial number or somehow waiting so long before retrying with the same email address is what worked - I don't know what happened but it did work for me.

So GL with your problem. In the future the absolute last resort for me will be doing a factory reset after this experience. From now on if I run into ANY problems with ANY Roku app the first thing I'll do is reset both my router and my modem by unplugging them from power for 30 seconds and plugging them back in. I'm convinced that if I had done that and had not done the factory reset that my problems would have been resolved and I could have avoided this hassle, especially since doing that had fixed my similar problems in October 2020 as I mentioned in the post.

[kcforreal]

Rjfskelt04: I just replied to Rrsanchez, I hope that reply helps you too. Btw, I am not a Roku employee.

[scottperezfox]

Suffering the same problems as the original post. I haven’t tried restarting because the connection works fine on all my computers, but I’ll give that a try. What a weird system we have here. 

[Alchemist]

Having literally the exact same problem. All my apps, especially youtube with the same black screen problem, became incredibly buggy (no amount of reinstalling them helped) and the internal clock got all out of whack. I tried all the 'solutions' listed in other threads but nothing helped. On top of that, it simply refused to update, so I figured a complete and total factory reset was all that was left to try.

Now I'm hung up on activation with this error. At first I thought it was because maybe it was reading my email as a bad word or something, but even trying a different email address didn't help. Same error. I even tried leaving it alone and coming back later like someone else suggested and I got a message saying it timed out, but there was no confirmation email or anything. It wasn't in my spam or trash either, I checked. I tried to submit it again, and same error popped back up.

This is incredibly frustrating. I got this TV because of the built in Roku support so I didn't need yet another box to attach to it, but now I can't even watch the channels I pay for!

[scottperezfox]

FIXED. 

As part of all these problems-on-top-of-problems, I took the suggestion to restart the modem and router (even though the internet is working fine). That did it.

For whatever reason, a fresh connection helped jumpstart the TV and its Roku system back to full functionality.

If you're struggling with all this, try restarting the connection gear. It makes no sense, I know, but give it a try.

[nzario9]

Having actually the suitable equal problem. All my apps, specifically YouTube with the same black display display screen hassle, became enormously buggy (no amount of reinstalling them helped) and the inner clock were given all out of whack. I attempted all of the answers indexed in other threads but now not anything helped.