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Spotify auto-update soft-locks the computer with Controlled Folder Access feature on
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Setup:
- Windows 11 Desktop
- Spotify Premium
- Controlled Folder Access feature turned on (Windows Security -> Ransomware Protection)
- Personal folder (including "/Music") root set to Microsoft OneDrive
Spotify auto-update seems to be soft-locking Windows 11 with the Controlled Folder Access feature turned on. When auto-update happens, the name of the new Spotify executable is different from the previous one (something along the lines of SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic_1.185.895.0_x86__xxxxxxxxxxxxx).
During the update, Spotify attempts to access the "/Music" folder (even if "Local Files" feature from Spotify settings is turned off), but since the executable has changed, Windows Security will block the operation.
What ends up happening is Windows 11 soft-locking with no file operations of any kind being possible any longer (this will hang most applications in short order) and no new applications of any kind being possible to launch. Windows GUI will, however, remain responsive (you can use the mouse). But since not even Ctrl+Alt+Del works at this point, the OS is quite royally frozen. The only possibility at this point is a manual reset of the computer.
After a reboot, a notification from Windows Security will pop up, telling the user that Spotify was blocked from making changes to "/Music" folder. Once a security exception is granted to the new executable via the Controlled Folder Access Settings, the problem goes away until the next update.
Now, there are a couple of fundamental problems with this:
- If Windows 11 Controlled Folder Access is turned on, turning the setting off for just /Music folder cannot be done (Windows seems to define a couple of hard-set folders whose access rights are set to stone).
- Spotify shouldn't peek around in my /Music folder anyway during installation (or any other time for that matter) if I have the "Local Files" setting turned off.
- Spotify auto-updates cannot be turned off, so this is a regular occurrence.
PS. I don't know if having the My Documents folder set to OneDrive cloud has anything to do with this issue, but since it might, I've also mentioned that above.



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