This page is not available offline! -- How to fix?

[DRSDavidSoft]

I am a Network Administrator, and I'm trying to get the standalone desktop version of Spotify to work on Windows 10.

After entering the account information, the app logs in successfully, however, I'm seeing the following error message:

No internet connection detected. Spotify will automatically try to reconnect when it detects an internet connection (error code:4)

To reduce wasting your time, I have already confirmed the following:

• Logging out and logging in again
• Updated to the latest released version
• Performing a full Uninstall, and re-installing cleanly
• Checked that firewall is not interfering with Spotify in any way
• All requests go through successfully
• Made sure the country of originating IP matches the one set in the account settings
• Obviously, the device has internet access

I have tried the Web Player -- and I can confirm that everything works in there; same with a quick test on an Android device.

It seems that this is an issue with the app itself, and I have already reviewed many "solution" that claim fix the issue, but they mainly just consist of the "Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again" types of advice, i.e., the non-working ones.

I would like to repeat my earlier statement: This screen is displayed right after a successful login, which means the error message of being "offline" is bogus.  (Idea suggestion: it could say that the app was not able to access whatever it needs, instead of wrongly saying that the internet connection is not available!)

 

A side note:

The first time I tried to re-login (on the clean installation, with a recently changed password), I got the following issue: "accesspoint:39". Following another post on this forum, I tried closing and reopening the app, which fixed this issue for me.

Regretfully, I do not see any documentation on exactly what domains, IP addresses, ports, etc. Spotify requires to access, so I can troubleshoot this problem somehow. I had expected to find some content on this issue.

Would any of the support staff so kindly help me in the right direction, so I can correctly fix the issue? To avoid unnecessary duplicated responses, please be aware that I have already tried all generic and common advice -- I'm ready to get into the next step of fixing the issue.

I would appreciate some technical-friendly response on how to deal with this.

Plan

Free

Operating System

Windows 10

[Joel-M]

Hi @DRSDavidSoft,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community. I have seen all the confirmed list you have made, but there is one thing I would recommend that you didn't add to the list.

Would you mind turning off and on the internet on your computer? Wait at least 1 minute between turning off and on the internet.

Hope this helps. Looking out for your replies.

[DRSDavidSoft]

Hi @Joel-M,

Thank you for your suggestion!  I presume by doing this, we can give Spotify enough time for it to register the re-connect event.

I have had actually tried disconnecting the Internet and re-connecting several times before, but since it didn't help my case, I didn't include it in the list.  I have also attempted this again -- since I'd already upgraded to the latest version and performed a clean install.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to fix the issue, the Spotify app still says "Offline".

I would still like to appreciate the fact that you reviewed my confirmed list and took the time to post a suggestion.

P.S.: In order to verify that the connection is indeed working as expected, I used a packet capture software to ensure that the connection is getting through, and the server is indeed sending a reply back. Please see the attached image.

I would like to read on how I could debug the issue in the app itself, to see what is failing when communicating with the server-side, so I can manage to handle the issue myself.

If anyone in the technical team is willing to reach out, I would super appreciate it.

[DRSDavidSoft]

Solution:

I finally found out why this happens, and unfortunately, this behavior is NOT DOCUMENTED anywhere by the Spotify app developers team.  Shame on you!

So, why does this issue happen?  Because the Spotify app is querying Windows NCSI (Network Connectivity Status Indicator, or formerly Network Location Awareness ), which is a BROKEN feature that allows Windows to detect if your device is connected to the Internet.

However, this feature is unstable and never works correctly, so Windows mis-detects a WORKING connection as "No Internet", which is dumb.  In addition to that, if you have manually disabled this feature, Spotify will stop working due to the Internet not being "detected" using this feature.

So, to solve this issue, I made sure I had uninstalled the broken Windows update, temporarily disabled my Pi-hole and Proxy, and restarted my network interface.  Spotify started working immediately after that!

There is no need to reboot the entire computer for this thing.  I hate it when support personnel simply instruct the user to "just restart the computer" -- where there is no need for that, if the user can simply follow some simple instructions.

Sorry for my long rant, hopefully, this will help anyone who comes from Google to here.