Memory leak after Windows 10 Creators Update?

[Clorix]

Brief description of the issue:  After updating today from the Windows 10 Anniversary Update to the Creators Update, Spotify seems to be leaking memory when I start Spotify, to the point that it causes my computer to run completely out of memory within a minute or two.  I have narrowed it down to Spotify by means of starting one program at a time and observing memory usage as reported by Task Manager.  This has never been an issue before updating to the Creators Update.  I can get Spotify to start without a memory leak after a few attempts.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Update Windows 10 to Creators Update (version 1703, OS Build 15063.138)
2. Start Spotify.
3. As Spotify loads (which takes quite a while ever since Spotify updated a while back, but that's another topic), check Task Manager's Performance>Memory window to see that memory usage is rising quickly.
4. To stop my computer from freezing before running out of memory, I must force close Spotify using Task Manager>Details>Spotify.exe>End Process Tree, at which point memory usage returns to normal values.

What steps you’ve tried already:  Uninstalling Spotify, then restarting my computer, and finally reinstalling Spotify.

Your device and operating system:  

Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703, OS Build 15063.138)

Core i7-2600k @ 4.2 GHz, 16 GBs DDR3 memory, 500 GB OS HDD (Spotify installed here), 2 TB RAID 0 data drive (most music stored here), 400 GB network-attached storage drive (a bit more music stored here), Nvidia GTX 770 2 GB graphics card (unsure if relevant).

Type of Spotify account you have:  Free

The app version of Spotify you’re using:  1.0.52.725.g943b26a8

Any screenshots, if they can help to explain your issue:Completely out of memory. This was taken as my computer was frozen. As you can see, 100% memory usage in only 12 minutes of computer uptime. Spotify used up about 11 GBs of memory in less than two of those minutes.Here's a before and after opening Spotify memory usage curve. Graph width is 60 seconds.Another attempt to open Spotify. Graph width is 60 seconds.Weirdly, neither Resource Monitor or the Details tab in Task Manager reports any extreme memory usage (for any process, not just Spotify!)

[ClaudeZ]

Thank you very much for notifying @Clorix. This is exactly the information I was waiting for weeks (for months ?). I tested it by myself and I confirm that it works perfectly. No memory leaks at all. And an app that starts much more rapidly..Spotify is finally back for Windows 10 / Creators update users. Spread the news...

[_M-I-K-I_]

On my machine Spotify Windows Store Edition, doesn't change anything. Spotify hangs my Windows 10. Only Web Player is working without freezing. 😕

[_M-I-K-I_]

The latest version 1.0.59 did not resolved this problem. My system W10 hangs again and again, when Spotify is active. 

[sw4rfega]

Try the Windows 10 Store version. Uninstall the desktop version and install the store one and see if that works.

[_M-I-K-I_]

@sw4rfega I tried, but without any positive effects.

[sw4rfega]

Did you reboot after the initial uninstall?

[_M-I-K-I_]

Of course. I performed registry scan also, before installation process.

[user-removed]

I have Windows 7 (x64), I just installed a new PC (G4560 + 8 GB DDR4 @ 3400MHz + SSD). I am a programmer and I am used to heavy environments such as Eclipse ide, and I am VERY unhappy with how heavy / slow it is to Spotify PC version.

In my case does not hang the PC (freezes for a few seconds), but I happen to have a full screen and then close, it seems that nothing happened and I do not see the desktop again, the "image" of Spotify temporarily becomes the wallpaper .

I do not understand how a company so big as Spotify has desktop clients with such a worryingly poor performance.

[loopguru]

Same problem here with Win 10. The Spotify version in the Windows 10 Store shows the same issue.

Thomas

[user-removed]

One screenshot:

[wdylkt]

I've downloaded the app via Windows app store. At first the app went well, it didn't freeze my Windows. then few days later the app froze again and emit weird sounds. I tried to open the app again and it went well. I don't know what went wrong but now I use spotify in web browser. Please someone fix this.

[ryansdoherty]

+++ FIXED IT +++

I did the following to fix this:

- turn off "Hardware acceleration" in Spotify (even though it doesn't fully load, click "View" and ensure it's turn off)

- stop & disable "Superfetch" (search for for "superfetch" in windows and click on "Services".. scroll down and stop it.. click properties and disable it)

It should work.  If it still doesn't work.. download an updaed version of spotify from the microsoft app store..

Should work after this..

[loopguru · Accepted solution]

I tried the following on my Dell XPS 13 without success:

1. Used Spotify from W10 app store
2. Disable superfetch Windows service
3. Disable hardware acceleration
4. Finally installed W10 completely from scratch and run the Windows update procedure.

This took me days.

The real root cause was a malfunctioning Windows driver which had a memory leak.

What one can see is that Windows is eating increasingly memory. Shortly later the PC crashes or freezes. In Win task manager one as well can see that the memory is not taken by any program, as well not by Spotify! It is eaten by the operating system itself.

What happened is one of the recent automatic Windows updates delivered a driver which had a memory leak. This is why a reinstallation of Windows didn’t help in my case.

The drivers Windows delivers are normally not the newest ones. If you go to the driver specific vendor sites you find more recent versions.

So my hope was that the driver vendor has fixed already the issue and if I download the most recent driver directly from the vendor site the problem will be solved.

The problem was to find out which driver needs an update. On my Dell notebook Windows uses more than 160 different drivers.

I solved the issue by buying a commercial driver update utility which costed around 35 EUR. It updated more than 20 drivers on my system.

And the issue is solved: My systems runs without issues for weeks now.

The reason why I initially thought Spotify is the culprit is because this programs always starts together with my PC.

It seems it is against the forum rules to mention the software which I bought. My post was censored two times already. So you need to find the right driver update utility yourself.

Thomas