Spotify going through Downloads, causing lag.

[Snollebol]

Plan

Premium

Country

Netherlands

Device

Desktop pc

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Hi! I tried googling around but I couldn't find an answer, so here goes!

When I boot my pc, everything starts to lag up once I get into windows. This takes about 5-10 minutes at most and it even affects my mouse pointer and such. my data drive (HDD) is always 100% active when this happens. 

So I've been keeping an eye on Resmon to see what is happening to my disk and now I think it might be Spotify that is causing all this? Spotify's read/write numbers are off the charts and it seems to be going through films in my local downloads folder, a couple at a time. It's only films, by the way, nothing else.
What it's doing, I'm not sure, but it's doing a lot.

Is there a way I can turn this off? There's no reason for the program to go through my downloads folder anyway.

I have local files turned off.

Some additional details: 

I'm using the regular desktop client (not the store version).

My pc is clean, healthy, and free of malware.
I've tested my HDD and it's healthy.

My pc is completely up-to-date and so are my drivers.

I've tried fully reinstalling Spotify.

Sorry if this is stupid, but I really have no idea how to disable the snoopin' 😞 my disk is going as hard as it can possibly go but it just can't keep up!

[Elena]

Hey there @Snollebol!

Thanks for reaching out to the Community about this

Kudos on the troubleshooting so far! Let's see what else we can try out here.

We can suggest downloading the app from the Microsoft store as it it optimized for Windows 10.

It's also worth trying to disable hardware acceleration in the app:

1. Click Edit in the menu bar. Select Preferences.

2. Scroll down and uncheck Hardware acceleration.

3. Restart Spotify.

If that doesn't do it for you you can try to turn off the feature Open Spotify automatically when you log into the computer. You can find that in Settings> Show advanced settings >Startup and Windows behavior.

Keep us in the loop here!

[Snollebol]

Hey Elelna, thanks for the reply!

Unfortunately I can't use Microsoft Store apps.

Hardware acceleration is off, but the problem persists. I've set 'open automatically' to 'no', but the program still opens automatically regardless and I can't find Spotify in the startup tab of the Task Manager in order to do so manually.

I'd assume that disabling the program from startup would help a lot, depending on whether Spotify only goes through films if it opens when windows starts or not. Unfortunately I can't find a way to really disable it from startup.

[Alex]

Hey there @

Thanks for the post.

Could you try the following:

1. Launch the Task Manager. You can find it by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting it from the pop-up list, pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete, or by searching for it in the Windows search box.
2. If the Task Manager only shows the current programs you have open, get it to reveal more information by selecting More Details at the bottom of the window. Doing so opens a larger window with a much longer list of apps and various tabs. Don’t get overwhelmed! Look at the tab options and go to the one that says Startup.
3. The Startup tab shows you all the apps that can automatically start up with Windows. You’ll notice that all active apps say Enabled in the Status Section, while inactive ones are Disabled. Try disabling Spotify here.

Let us know if that helps.

[Snollebol]

Thanks again for the reply! 

Unfortunately Spotify is not in the startup tab.  I've also checked msconfig to be sure, but there's nothing related to Spotify there either, unless it's using a different name for the process?

Perhaps I need to change something in the registry?

[Eni]

Hi @Snollebol, 

Thanks for getting back in touch. 

No worries, we can add a few more steps to make sure we've covered all bases.

We suggest that you head over to Settings > Turn Show Local files on > disable all the sources that appear there > turn Show Local Files back off and restart your PC to check if that makes the difference. 

If the issue persists, could you let us know the exact make/model, operating system and Spotify version of your device?

Keep us posted.