[Windows] Black Screen

[cuthbertnibbles]

Plan

Premium

Country

Canada 

Device

RYZEN 5 1600X and GTX 970

Operating System

Windows 10 Enterprise 1803

My Question or Issue

When launching Spotify, it only shows a black screen with the "Settings" dots in the top left corner and the Windows close, minimize and maximize buttons in the top right. While these work, the window cannot be dragged around or resized.

Troubleshooting steps taken:

From the previous Spotify Black screen:

• Uninstalled Spotify numerous times, rebooting between uninstall, installation and test
• Updated to latest GPU drivers, reinstalled
• Launched Spotify from command line (as per Peter's comment, which, despite not working, is a ridiculous workaround for a paid subscription software)
• Creating a shortcut and appending --disable-accelerated-layers --disable-accelerated-fixed-root-background

I'd like to try installing as Admin or putting the files somewhere else (we use Windows Folder Redirection so the appdata folder gets synced to and run from my servers; as a sysadmin f-u for this Spotify) but apparently neither of these options are fathomable. What is worth pointing out is that I have a RYZEN 5 processor-so no integrated graphics. Many users in this thread suggest switching to internal graphics, which my system doesn't support.

Also, if anyone can tell me how to change the install folder, I would be eternally grateful, Spotify is using up insane amounts of storage space in our organization because every user's install is synced to userdata stores - it's getting really expsnsive but I think it's a bit extreme to ban an entire streaming service just because the devs are too stubborn to act normal and have it install locally. I'd even run an MSI installer and push it to every machine, or include it in our default image if need be, but Spotify without any music is over 150MB per user synced to highly available, backed up storage. It hurts!

Thank you for all your help.

[Loxer]

Hey @cuthbertnibbles, welcome to the Community.

Hope you are doing great!

Sorry to hear that you are having issues with Spotify!

Have you tried disabling Hardware Acceleration?

If not, please go to that 3 dots Menu, in the View section you can find it there to disable HA.

About the storage of Spotify, it's not the app's size but the streamed songs which take the space 🙂

Please go to Spotify settings and under the Advanced Settings you can change the Offline Songs Storage. To limit it's size just follow this guide here 🙂

Let me know how that goes 🙂

[cuthbertnibbles]

Thanks @Loxer, I tried this, but it didn't resolve the issue.

What ended up doing it for me was uninstalling it on my desktop, installing it on my laptop, then letting folder reidrection sync it to my desktop. It's...

(•_•) -> ( •_•)>⌐■-■ -> (⌐■_■)

SPOTTY

But it works well enough.