VMWare SSL cert interrupting Spotify website?

[Xathian]

Ok this has been an issue for me for 2 years now, I have tried everything short of reformatting (I'd rather not do that) so I am going to ask you guys to see if you can solve this mystery. I get almost nothing from a hundred google searched on the matter but here it goes

 

About 2 years ago I installed VMWare to run a few VMs to test things, nothing was really an issue with the install (and later uninstall) however I came to find that after using VMWare whenever I try to go to any Spotify link (Specifically any link that starts as https://open.spotify.com, which are mainly song and playlist URLs) the website will get stopped by my browser (Happens in every browser) saying the SSL cert is invalid. If I use the "Ignore this and continue" option it just directs to a 404 error. I tried opening the Certificate window and I found that apparently somehow this website has become bound to a VMWare certificate on my PC. Here's a picture:

 

 

I have tried deleting the browsers certificate cache, reinstalling the browser, I exported this VMWare Cert from the browser and put it in the Windows Trusted Root Authority (Probably not a safe thing but I was trying everything) and nothing will fix it. Couldn't get support from VMWare on it (They appear to only care to help if you're a vSphere user or some other high paying enterprise client) and I am entirely out of ideas now.

[Acedia]

VMWare adds a couple of lines to your %windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Try commenting them out and check if the issue presists.

[mtz_federico]

Also try changing your dns to something public like google or cloudflare

[Xathian]

23 hours ago, Acedia said:

VMWare adds a couple of lines to your %windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Try commenting them out and check if the issue presists.

Congratulations you have solved a mystery that 2 years of google results could not. Thank you for your help.

[Acedia]

2 hours ago, Xathian said:

Congratulations you have solved a mystery that 2 years of google results could not. Thank you for your help.

Oh wow. That's still strange since IIRC those urls are just vmware.somethignsomething stuff, but glad it worked! 

[Jarsky]

2 hours ago, Xathian said:

Congratulations you have solved a mystery that 2 years of google results could not. Thank you for your help.

 

You could probably remove that certificate as well since it's expired. Open Internet Options > Content > Certificates

Find the VMware certificate and remove.