Spotify is offline when VirtualBox network adapter is online

[JohnnyD4]

Win 10

I noticed that the Spotify App complains about not having an internet uplink, that happened several times during the last weeks. After quite a lot of debugging (firewall rules, reinstallation ...) I think I finally found the reason why: I have a "VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter" on my system. Right after disabling this adapter Spotify is no longer in offline mode. On the contrary if I re-enable the adapter Spotify is not (immediately) offline again. Nevertheless I think this must be the reason.

Other software like the Firefox Browser does not seem to be affected by this, why does the Spotify App have these issues?

[latolato]

My problem is little different but the main reason is quite same.

I've spotify on my Win10 (192.168.100.0/24)  and my volumio (spotify connect capable) player is in the same network. Now when I try to listen spotify with my volumio (Spotify app-> Connect to a device etc) it can't find any devices.

I tried little Wireshark sniffing and it seems that spotify binds itself to VirtualBox host nic (192.168.102.1) and it tries to find (=broadcast) nearby devices from there and of course can't find any.

I'm wondering is there any commandline parameter etc etc that I could use to tell the right nic for spotify.exe? 

[MStanbrook]

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Error-Code-4-Forever/td-p/4912393

It's Spotify's pointless reliance on the Network Location Awareness service. However the bug is in Windows. You can fix it by pointing your NLA registry settings to use Google's DNS resolvers to check for network connectivity. You can find the fix on youtube, and it's even recommended by Microsoft techs in Microsoft's Technet forums.

A combination of a windows update (that stops you disabling nla completely) and installing virtualbox also broke Spotify - and the Microsoft Store - for me. I quit Spotify in the end. Easier than updating the registry every time Windows 'fixes' it.