Solving playback issues

[RobertET]

My Roku has not had problems other than one failed remote.  I recently moved, and when I went to use the Roku, it won't boot up passed the bouncing Roku logo.  I have tried resetting it numerous times.  I have tried hard connecting to my router by ether net.  Neither my remote nor my iphone app can connect to it.  Any other ideas of things to try?

[atc98092]

About the only thing left to try is a hard reset. Find the hidden recessed reset button and hold it in for a minimum of 30 seconds. Ignore whatever is happening on the screen, you must hold it for at least 30 seconds to properly trigger the reset. Then power cycle and see if you get the initial welcome and setup screen. If you don't, then something happened while it was powered off and moved. I can't guess what that might be, but it's probably not fixable outside a repair facility. Unfortunately, devices like this are usually less expensive to replace than repair. 

[makaiguy]

Do l you have an SD card installed in your Ultra. Try removing it and see if that allows it to complete its boot up. I had to do this recently, after no problems for a long time. I haven't yet put the sd card back in to see if the problem returns.

[Armcode]

I had the same exact problem. A corrupted SD card leads to the Roku Ultra not booting. If you plug a corrupted SD card in while the device is on the Roku seems to crash. Putting the SD card into my PC it detected it as unformated.  Formatted the card. After doing this it worked fine. I pulled power while running Netflix channel (and this was stored on SD card) leading to the SD card corruption. 

Would suggest Roku look into how they handle corrupt SD cards in their boot process/OS (pluggin in a corrupt SD card seems to crash the OS).

[makaiguy]

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@makaiguy wrote:
I haven't yet put the sd card back in to see if the problem returns.

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When I put the card in, it repeated the stall out at the dancing Roku letters.  I shut down, put the card in my PC and reformatted as FAT32, then put it back in the Roku.  This time it booted up normally, said it found an SD card and asked it I wanted to format it.  I said yes, and so far everything is working as it should.

[RobertET]

No SD card for me. I tried the reset, but it doesn’t seem to work. After holding for about ten seconds, it is back to bouncing logo. Holding longer makes no difference. Just pushing the reset button gives the same result as holding it for thirty or even 90 seconds. It is like it won’t even get to a true, hard reset.

[RobertET]

I may try actually using an SD card and see if that somehow changes things up enough to let it boot.

[makaiguy]

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 I shut down, put the card in my PC and reformatted as FAT32, then put it back in the Roku.  This time it booted up normally, said it found an SD card and asked it I wanted to format it.  I said yes, and so far everything is working as it should.

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And now, a few days later, the Roku froze in the MLB app, then rebooted itself after a few minutes.   Reboot stalled out with the dancing Roku letters, as before.  Powering down and removing the SD card allowed the Roku to boot up normally when the power cord was plugged back in.

Guess I'll just be leaving the card out for now.

[RobertET · Accepted solution]

Last night, my problem spontaneously resolved and the Roku is working again. I have no idea why.

[mandi4u]

Thank you so much.  I had the same issue and your recommend fix did the trick.