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Spotify is already running, but not responding. Please close it and try again.

I keep getting this "already running" message when I try to open spotify.  It is listed as a process in Windows Task Manager, but it won't close when I try to force end the process.  I've been having this same issue many times over the past month.

 

Any ideas how to actually end the process, or better yet, keep it from doing this altogether?

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141 Replies


@deejerydoo wrote:

Hah! Found the "Quote" button in the editor! Still should have a date/time stamp though... 🙂


The forum software is a little clunky sometimes, don't worry I got your messages to my BlackBerry anyways 😉 

 

Yes I have now tested it with ICS enabled (although it appears I did not post the results in this topic) and it does cause issues. This issue is known to the Spotify team so hopefully Windows 8 can be fully supported sometime soon! Thankfully I don't need ICS, but I can see why this is massively frustrating! 

 

Peter

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

Spotify Last.FM Twitter LinkedIn Meet Peter Rock Star Jam 2014


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@Peter wrote:

The forum software is a little clunky sometimes, don't worry I got your messages to my BlackBerry anyways 😉 

 

Yes I have now tested it with ICS enabled (although it appears I did not post the results in this topic) and it does cause issues. This issue is known to the Spotify team so hopefully Windows 8 can be fully supported sometime soon! Thankfully I don't need ICS, but I can see why this is massively frustrating! 

 

Peter


Just to reiterate, this is not about Windows 8 being fully supported, Peter, there are plenty of us on Windows 7 who need ICS and are having this problem. That said, I'm glad the team knows about it. Please keep us updated.


@Peter wrote:

@deejerydoo wrote:

Hah! Found the "Quote" button in the editor! Still should have a date/time stamp though... 🙂


The forum software is a little clunky sometimes, don't worry I got your messages to my BlackBerry anyways 😉 

 

Yes I have now tested it with ICS enabled (although it appears I did not post the results in this topic) and it does cause issues. This issue is known to the Spotify team so hopefully Windows 8 can be fully supported sometime soon! Thankfully I don't need ICS, but I can see why this is massively frustrating! 

 

Peter


"Clunky" Heh! I wonder who did the UAT on that one!?

Are you able to cross-post a link to your above mentioned posted test results? I would also like to second that this is most definitely a problem on Windows 7 and NOT a Windows 8 support issue!

Marked as solution

Okay that is my bad! Reading back yes this does appear to be on going issue from Windows 7, today has been a slow morning ignore me 😉 

 

I will see if I can find those results, although I am currently away from uni where my testing PCs for this are, so I will have a quick dig through the community instead and see if I can find it. 

 

I will also drop a escalation to the Spotify staff about this to see if they can give anymore details (as a super user not an employee there is only so much I can do!). 

 

Peter

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

Spotify Last.FM Twitter LinkedIn Meet Peter Rock Star Jam 2014


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Thanks for the prompt reply Peter. My apologies... I thought "Band Member" was a euphemism for being a Spotify staffer. Unfortunately, my learning of this factoid only makes the volume louder on the lack of responses on these threads from Spotify staffers!

 

Combine the forum-shy Spotify staffers with the woeful support I got from their support team, for this issue, and Spotify are setting themselves up for a very disloyal client base. Something they really need to take a good hard look at in this ever shrinking market!

Hey deejerydoo - we're here and aware of the issue.

 

We don't have anything to suggest for a fix just yet though. Any more info we can get from you guys would be great.

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@sid9103 wrote:

I've been having this same problem on Windows 7, disabling my internet connection sharing seems to have fixed it for the time being. So clearly, judging by the myriad different people in this thread who have had the same problem, Spotify crashes and becomes unkillable when one of two things happens, either the user has internet connection sharing enabled, or the user has brought the computer out of sleep or hibernate. The ball is in your court, Spotify, this problem is real and is easily recreatable in the conditions listed above. I need internet connection sharing and use it almost daily, so disabling it is not a solution I am willing to accept.

Can I get some kind of confirmation that your developers are aware of this problem and are working to fix it? I do plenty of coding and graphic design work on my computer and the zombie spotify process forces me to restart multiple times a day, which is wreaking havoc on my workflow. I have been a subscriber since the service came to the US, and I've been raving about it since before then, but this is really souring my listening experience. An unkillable process should be unheard of in this day and age, and if this problem persists I will be forced to end my premium subscription.


Entirely agree.  I have my ICS disabled since I don't need it on, and it still happens when I wake from hibernation. Not only that, but does it randomly start skipping for you, even when your connection is strong as ever? This continues to happen to me despite several reinstalls the spottyfy support team suggested (Thanks Guys!) after I threatened to cancel my $9.99/month premium.  I am an intermediate computer user/ noob, so I know not, but since there is no superior alternative to Spotify should I just expect this kind of performance from a subscription-based, streaming music service? God, I hope not. Spotify is so amazing when it works. Being reminded of scratched up CDs or the inability to hear the music I pay for is not.  I really hope performance improves.  Come on guys! Please don't become another internet relic...

Same here ... when it crashes but I can't afford to reboot (sorry for not wanting to stop working ô_o) the process cannot be killed

I have the same problem and as many have said, it clearly has something to do with going to hibernate. I also have the same problem, that I can't reboot my computer at will at work, so I may have to wait until the end of the day to reboot and get spotify back. Hopefully this issue will be fixed soon!

Richard, first of all the fact that it's taken this long for a Spotify employee to respond to this thread is absurd, not to mention the fact that you've requested "more information" before you take any action. Had you read the thread at all, you'd see that I've pointed out, in my post here that the problem is easily reproduced under those conditions (ICS sharing and waking from standby/hibernate). What more in the way of information do you want? Could you be more specific?

 

Peter's impotent placations are no comfort when, as I've already mentioned, I have plenty of graphic design and programming projects open on my computer all the time, and my workflow is being heavily disrupted by my daily restarts to fix this problem. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, disabling ICS is not a solution. I'm currently overseas, and my only reliable internet connection is from a USB 3G dongle, and I have to use ICS to use the connection on my other devices.

 

I have been a premium subscriber of Spotify since the first day it came to the States. I have evangelised it to all my friends, and convinced a few of them to get premium subscriptions too. It is getting harder and harder for me to justify recommending Spotify in the light of this absolutely rubbish level of customer service. Google has announced that, if you subscribe to Google Play Music before June 30, they will allow you to get their equivalent of Spotify premium for $7.99 a month. If I do not get an adequate response by the 29th of June, I will be ending my premium subscription and switching to Google's service, and I will probably be able to convince my friends to join me.

 

I'm not interested in more useless posts from Spotify "super users". I understand Peter is only trying to help, but I want a response from a Spotify employee, and I want to see that your team is taking action. Excuse my tone, but this bug has wasted countless hours of my life, and I'm kinda running out of patience here. If you're unable to reproduce this problem, we'll gladly do whatever you need to gather more information for your team. As a lot of people have already mentioned in this thread, this is an easily reproduced glitch for most of us.

Hey sid9103, sorry if you feel we'll having been handling this as well as we should be. We'll do better.

 

I would remind you that this Community is not officially a support channel and relies on the goodwill of users to help each other out. Peter - for instance - is one of our top superusers and has done a great job so far - unfortunately some issues will of course go beyond what a single user can do, and require our assistance.

 

You are always free to get in touch with us directly via our contact form or Twitter (@SpotifyCares).

 

But that's not to say I don't want this fixed as much as you - and I'll do everything I can to help get this fixed. My last post asking for more information was almost two months ago and the thread was quiet until a few days ago; so I will admit this fell off my radar a little bit. But I won't give up on you.

 

To clarify, by "more information" it'd be great if we could specifically get the following:

 

1. The version of Spotify you're currently running (in the two months since my last post we've had lots of releases, and are rolling a new one out now - so we need to confirm it's happening in the latest: 0.9.1)

 

2. Steps to reproduce the issue, or the circumstances under which the crash will occur (ie. as much as you can provide in order for us to produce the same bug on our end - just "turn on ICS" most likely won't be enough for the devs, I'm afraid)

 

3. Time of day of the crash, along with your username (so we can go through the crash reports)

 

Many thanks for your cooperation.

 

Check out our Twitter for the latest updates on any service issues: @Spotifystatus

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Same issue. I've tried the ICS fix, to no avail, as well as reinstalling spotify (i'm on the most recent version). My spotify player will freeze, I'll have to manually kill it, but the exe process remains and receive the error message. I'm on windows 7.

 

To the mod, it's kinda hard to describe the conditions that lead to the crash, as they seem to just be normal use. If you're looking for a crash report, it just happened to me about an hour ago (again). Restarting still seems to be the only fix, but the problem comes back after hibernating.

Also, my version is 0.9.1.53.g876fa9df, and I'm runnig Windows 7 64bit. I just restarted, so if it happens again, I'll post pics.

For what it's worth, this started happening to me the last few days - happens on my work laptop (Win 7) but not my desktop at home (also Win 7). 

 

It's really frustrating as it requires rebooting the computer everytime, and most recently froze after playing 3 or 4 songs. 

 

I've tried killing the process through task manager, process tree, and even through the command line - through the command line gives a success message, but the process remains.

 

To be honest this is making me reconsider paying for spotify premium, as this and the support for earlier problems on the Android App have been pretty lacking. 

To add to the list of people who find it totally unacceptable and absurd that this error: 

 

1. Still exists, years later and 

 

2. Spotify is designed to resist being force closed in the first place... 

 

Here is my non-relevant issue. It doesn't matter what version we are running, I would say that this issue exists regardless of what version you are running, since 99% of users probably update as soon as prompted, and 100% of users are prompted for each update. 

 

1. The version of Spotify you're currently running 

.9.1.57.ge7405149


Bonus hint: Design this part of the UI so that a user can copy/paste it, to ensure accuracy. 

 

2. Steps to reproduce the issue, or the circumstances under which the crash will occur 

This happens only when I put my computer into Hibernate (I never use Sleep, I mean Hibernate) and Spotify is running. I was going to say when it is running and playing a song, but I am unable to confirm that.

 

Just now, at 10:50p PST I tried putting the freshly rebooted PC into hibernate while Spotify was "idle" and while it was playing a song and was unable to reproduce the error. I would say it happens no more than once per week. 

 

If there are log files that I can send, please let me know. Looking the C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Spotify folder that the application executes from doesn't show any logfiles that I can see. Same with C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Spotify

 

I have been using Spotify on this PC since 7/8/2013 and have never reinstalled. 

 

3. Time of day of the crash, along with your username 

The last one was today, at appx 4pm PST. Username is RSDeuce. 

 

4. Other relevant information

I am running a fully patched version of Windows 7 Professional, on standard Intel Core i5 laptop hardware. Integrated laptop/WiFi/NIC/you name it. I have no special hardware or drivers running. The only software drivers that have been loaded that are not "stock" for the machine are those for VMWare Workstation 8. 

Thanks RSDeuce!

By the way, you can click on the version number to copy it to the clipboard - rather than typing it each time. Hope that helps!
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Did anyone here ever get this problem solved?
I'm having a hell of a time with it...


@MarcP wrote:

Did anyone here ever get this problem solved?
I'm having a hell of a time with it...


We're happy to help you out, Marc.

 

What have you tried so far?

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I am having the same issue, ...when you say " what have you tried"...I have bebooted and reinstalled and moved the directory to the C drive

 

what else should I try...

@george56 - Is there anything you are doing to trigger this issue, like putting the computer to sleep or hibernate like above? 

 

If its being caused by a client crash, I would suggest you try updating to the latest client version manually following the steps here and see if they correct this for you. 

 

Peter

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

Spotify Last.FM Twitter LinkedIn Meet Peter Rock Star Jam 2014


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