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Album Art Not Showing in Discover (Windows XP)

Album Art Not Showing in Discover (Windows XP)

For some time now the album art in Discover in the main pane has been missing on my  home desktop running windows XP ( yes I know it's a bit old hat) Album art does show in left hand pane - track currently playing and also avatars in right hand Activity pane .

 

Have 2 laptops running windows 7,  also at home , and it works just fine on these. Have searched for a solution but have had no success. I've tried a clean re-install , again without success. Can you please help as this is driving me absolutely nuts ?!!! 

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14 Replies

Do you get album artwork on artist/album pages and in Browse?

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

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


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Thanks for getting back !  No the album art is also missing from artists/albums - but on browse , most of the categories on the Browse Music section at the top of the page are missing.

The Spotify Sessions banner is fully visible and the Featured Playlists art is again missing altogether.

The News and New Release sections are showing all the album art. Weird !!

Hope this helps.

Can you try launching Spotify using the command in this post

The method for getting to the run dialogue might be slightly different on XP, my memory doesn't stretch back that far! 

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

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


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Hi - tried command as sugested  but get messsage - Windows cannot find C:\Documents. Checked system and found Spotify.exe and SpotifyLauncher.exe in C:\Documents and Settings\Steve\Application Data\Spotify  - I didn't specifically ask at install time to put it there - this must be the default. Perhaps this is the difference between XP and 7.
 
Can you tell me how to modify the Run Command accordingly?
 
Many Thanks

Try:

C:\Documents and Settings\Steve\Application Data\Spotify\spotify.exe --disable-accelerated-layers --disable-accelerated-fixed-root-background

Does that work? 

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

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


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Hi Peter, had to fiddle around a bit but eventually got it to run as follows ;    "C:\Documents and Settings\Steve\Application Data\Spotify\spotify.exe" --disable-accelerated-layers --disable-accelerated-fixed-root-background    -   it brought up Spotify (still with album art missing) but I think it didn't include the run parameters.  If I include these in the quotes it tries to find the whole file name and cannot obviously find it.  Just need the right sysntax in order to get the parameters (--disable-accelerated-layers --disable-accelerated-fixed-root-background) to execute.

Cheers

Wondering does anyone with an XP machine know?

@Rollo_ any ideas? 

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

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


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Hi

 

Not seeing it here, checked my current version installation this morning, double checked just now, all graphics are showing properly in both Discover and Browse.  Originally I thought it may be something in the stream, but only if the problem was more prevalent, which it isn't.

 

The very first thing I would try is running Spotify in Windows Safe Mode.  If that cures the problem, there is a conflict somewhere.

 

Next run Ccleaner, particurly the Registry cleaner.  On an old XP install, where a person may have uninstalled numerous programs, over time the various traces of the old programs build up and conflicts develop.  Sounds like Steve is beyond 'novice' level so its a shot in the dark, really.

 

If that fails, possibly video/graphics drivers.  It shouldn't be too difficult to try reinstalling the driver, so I'd try that before going on any major fishing expeditions to flush out possible conflicts.  XP drivers are getting more difficult to locate.  I've had success using SlimDrivers, free edition is available, just Google it.  Don't panic when you see 20+ updates, many times a single driver update will update multiple update prompts, particularly USB drivers.  In any case, the video driver has always come up first in the queue when I've used this software.  Video drivers are notoriously difficult to update and can be prone to problems.  Go with the defaults and always restart when prompted before moving on to the next update if you're going that route.  Be ready to use System Restore, just in case.  BTW, SlimDrivers sets a restore point at each driver install.

 

Honesly, I'd be more inclined to believe that its a conflict of some sort.  Turn off everything loaded at startup, msconfig or a third party startup manager, and if Spotify works, start turning things back on one by one.  You can try services.msc also.  You can usually tell what services aren't needed, but the rest, boy, this can be time consuming.

 

Sometimes, the easiest and most effective solution is to bite the bullet and reinstall XP.  Hopefully your install disc has SP3 included or slipstreamed.  If not, there are 'alternatives' out there.  <wink wink nudge nudge>  As far as I'm concerned, a license is a license, whether the XP disc you install from is official or unofficial.  Enough said on that in open channel, PM me if you want further recommendations.

I try to do my XP reinstall once a year, but it obviously takes time.  Take an evening and do your backups, another to assemble all the software to reinstall, then plan for a full day for the actual reinstall.  I HIGHLY recommend 2 partitions on a single drive system, one for Windows/Program Files/Documents & Settings, and putting My Documents and such on the second partition.  50 GB is more than enough for Windows and such.  Backups are now easier and you don't have to move everything off the drive to reinstall Windows the next time.

 

Anyway, once you reinstall XP, use SlimDrivers and the dreaded driver installs are a piece of cake.  Install Spotify first, even before you update the drivers.  it should work fine, then check again after each driver and program install.  Yep, this is drastic and time consuming.  But it will also make XP run a lot more smoothly, particularly if you've had other random problems on occasion.

Sorry, I didn't intend for my reply to be this long, but I figured I might as well try to cover all the bases.

Rollo (and Peter) , thanks for the very lengthy response- very much appreciated. Ran CC Cleaner as I hadn't run it for ages and have been checking drivers, but that didn't make any difference. I really don't feel motivated enough to go to the extreme of an XP reinstall especially as my DVD/CD unit has disappeared from my system and I'm now in the midst of uninstalling / reinstalling the drive to get it recognised again.  Seem to be other issues as weel - don't know if the registry's up the shoot.

As regards I-Tunes , will  just use on my laptops - bit annoying that it's not fully functional on the desktop but hey ho !

 

Thanks for your help with this nevertheless !

 

Cheers

 

Steve

From what you just said, Its almost certain to be an XP issue and only a reinstall is gonna fix it.  Trust me, I always procrastinate reinstalling myself.  Its not exactly fun.  I don't blame you at all for not wanting to go to that extreme.

 

Just try this.  Make a new user account on XP and install Spotify from there.  Worth a shot.

Thanks Rollo - will maybe give that a try in a few days when I can summon some energy to do it. At least I sorted my CD/DVD issue and some lengthy investigation  - turned out to be a couple of duff registry entries.

 

Thanks once agian for the advice !

 

Steve

I'm using Windows 7 in a corporate environment using a proxy server. I'm having the same problem in the discover tab not showing album art. The browse tab doesn't work at all. Everything else is running fine, listening to music, the artwork in the bottom-left of the screen, etc.

If you are behind a proxy it might be worth having a read at this topic:
http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Spotify-behind-a-https-proxy/m-p/639492#M...

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

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


If this post was helpful, please add kudos below!

Thank you!

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