Fixing Amazon Music Player blocked by Group Policy

A few months ago, a new Active Directory Group Policy was rolled out to my network in response to some nasty viruses going around.

And my Amazon Music Player stopped working, with a message:

C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Amazon Music\Amazon Music.exe

This program is blocked by group policy. For more information, contact your system administrator.

Error message for Amazon Music blocked by Group Policy

Not sure of the technical details, but the Group Policy effectively blocked any exe files from executing in the \users\AppData\local folder. And Amazon Music Player installs, by default into this folder.

I did some google searches, and found some complaints by system administrators. I also found some information on how to more selectively block executables, rather than block the entire folder. I also submitted a ticket to my help desk to see if they could unblock this particular executable, since I *must* work to music. But they declined, citing security concerns. They've got more important things to worry about.

So months went by, while I made due with Amazon's web-based player. However, I have also been unable to upload my large music library into Amazon's Music Library. The only way to do it is through Amazon Music Player, which was now blocked by the group policy.

And since I recently gave in to a subscription for the Amazon Music Library, I needed to get this working.

So here's what I did. I copied the entire folder containing the executable to another location. This is the folder I copied:

 C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Amazon Music\

I copied it to a spare drive I had, so it ended up here:

H:\Amazon Music\

Then I double-clicked on the executable here:

H:\Amazon Music\Amazon Music.exe

 Worked fine. So I put a shortcut to this copy of the executable on my desktop, and that's what I'm using.

A couple of caveats.

• Copying just the executable did not work. 
• Apparently there are some dll files whose relative paths must be maintained.
• The cached files remain in the original location in appdata\local
• I noticed that there are cache folders (that grow quite large) contained in the \Amazon Music\data folder. I cleared them, but even though I'm running the executable from a different location, the cache files still show up in the \Amazon Music\data folder.

Well, this got me running. I imagine it is not a permanent or ideal solution, but I can upload my mp3s into my Amazon Library now.