Spotify causes Windows 8.1 to crash

[jrivett]

Plan

Premium

Country

Canada

Device

Desktop PC

Operating System

Windows 8.1 64 bit

My Question or Issue

Spotify causes Windows 8.1 to crash hard with a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).

I easily determined that Spotify was causing the problem because I log all changes, and the last change I made was installing the Spotify application. Since removing the Spotify app, the system has been stable.

I switched to Premium because it's currently the only way to get 320 kbps. Since the app crashes my PC, and I can't risk installing it, there's no reason for me to continue with the Premium service.

I've read a lot of reports of similar issues with the app (here and elsewhere), covering the last several years, including some that are marked as 'solved' and are anything but solved. I found no reasonable solutions anywhere.

UPDATE: I found a workaround. I run the Spotify app in a Windows 10 VMWare virtual machine. So far it works great and audio quality is good. Of course, I'd rather not have to do that, so I look forward to a real fix from Spotify.

[Peter]

Hey @jrivett,

Thanks for reaching out to us about this. Glad to hear you've found a temporary workaround for now - let's see what we can do about the issue itself.

First off, could you confirm whether you downloaded the app for desktop directly from the Spotify website or instead from the Windows Store?

If you've tried one of the above and it didn't work, do you mind trying the other and seeing if that works for you instead?

If none of those work, we'd like to get some more details on exactly what's happening.

Specifically, we'd like to know at what point your PC crashes after you've installed the Spotify app: are you able to open the Spotify app at all or play music before it crashes?

In the meantime, if you could provide us with links to past solutions in the Community for some context, that would be really useful.

Thanks! Keep us posted!

[jrivett]

[1] I downloaded the app from https://www.spotify.com/us/download/windows.

[2] I'd like to try the Windows Store app version as you suggest, but I'm extremely hesitant to do so, as I require this computer for critical work, and the risk of a BSOD seems too high.

[3]The Spotify desktop app installed fine, and played audio fine. The crashes occurred after a random amount of time playing audio (minutes, hours). In one case, it crashed the instant I un-paused Spotify playback.

[4] Some related posts, as requested:

• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Windows-10-Spotify-freezes-PC-randomly-after-Creato...
  This one has a 'solution' which was to install the app instead of the desktop app; I haven't yet tried that, but I'm hesitant.
• https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/blue-screen-after-starting-spotify/7652c46f-2a...
  This isn't a Spotify post, but it's interesting and possibly relevant (Malwarebytes).
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Spotify-desktop-app-stops-playing-then-uses-all-sys...
  This one suggests that Realtek audio drivers might be the problem.
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Spotify-causes-BSOD-Eats-RAM/m-p/3933520
  Recommends uninstall/reinstall, turn off all advanced features.
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Audio-Graph-making-my-computer-freezing-and-BSoD/m-...
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Partners-Web-Player-etc/Loading-7-000-offline-music-BSOD-on-W...
  Conceivably related if the problem is memory related and it's trying to read all my media files.
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/windows-Spotify-triggers-blue-screen-of-death-crash...
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Blue-screen/m-p/2785096
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Memory-leak-after-Windows-10-Creators-Update/m-p/16...
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Spotify-Bugs-causing-computer-to-crash/m-p/52105
  This shows a solution that isn't a solution.
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Spotify-keeps-freezing-up-my-entire-computer/m-p/35...
  The 'solution' is to contact support separately.
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/All-Spotify-does-is-crash-Windows-7/m-p/356050
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Windows-7-Blue-Screen-When-Song-Ends/m-p/4798188
• https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Windows-Desktop-version-bluescreen-dpc-watchdog-vio...

[jrivett]

It looks like the Spotify app only runs on Windows 10. I'm on Windows 8.1 here. So I can't try it as you suggested.

I updated my audio drivers and will try a clean install of the Spotify desktop app.

[Alsn5581]

I have 5 laptops.  4 of them have windows 10 installed and one has 8.1.  I sometimes have a freeze and buzz issue on 8.1 with spotify and sometimes Youtube.  It usually won't happen until I have been listening for like 2 or 3 hours and will to do a hard reset.  I don't have the issue with the other laptops.