Frustrations With iTunes

[spliff(TONE)]

I've been using iTunes for well over 5 years now and have always really liked how it works....up until the last few months. I have no idea what is causing it, but iTunes now becomes unresponsive, then freezes and crashes (if I don't just Force Quit it myself) multiple times a day, every single ****ing day.

Outside of the problems with iTunes, my computer is running perfectly normal. Once I get iTunes going though, the whole computer starts lagging eventually; it even crashes my whole computer a few times per week. Sometimes simply playing music will lead to these problems; once I start importing or converting music though....problems are just bound to begin and will only get worse until iTunes shuts down and I must start up the whole process again.

I've started paying attention to my Activity Monitor to be sure that it's iTunes that is at fault here, and that is definitely the case. It will eat up 70-80% of the CPU like clockwork and it also hogs all my system memory when it is running screwy.

I have the latest version of iTunes and am running on the 10.6.8 OS. Also, my library is humongous (38,000+ songs taking up 207+ GB). I still have a ton of room on my very large internal hard drive though.

Any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated. As of now possible options I'm considering are: reinstalling iTunes, updating my OS to the newest version, adding RAM, or completely abandoning iTunes (would preferably avoid this route if possible).

[spliff(TONE)]

HHAA!! **** jumps to using over 170% of CPU when converting tracks. What a joke.

[1-800-STFU]

How much RAM do you have?

[natepro]

I'm actually having iTunes issues, too.

For some random reason, it's just started making songs stutter. It'll happen when a page is loading in Firefox, or even when I'm just scrolling down a page sometimes, it plays the same half-second or so of the song four or five times, and then goes on like normal.

Downloaded DoubleTwist to play music, and haven't had that problem once with it. So.. it's got to be an iTunes problem, I would think.

I have 4.50 GB of RAM, and until the last two or three weeks have never had this problem.

[1-800-STFU]

You have enough ram thats not the problem.

Itunes is known to have memory hog problems at times.

If you have windows try this out

1. Quit iTunes

2. Start an elevated command prompt (Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Right Click Command Prompt -> Run as Administrator)

3. type netsh winsock reset and then press Enter

4. reboot your machine

5. restart iTunes.

[dbroncos78087]

STFU, will that work on a Mac? I think he has one from his first post.

[1-800-STFU]

STFU, will that work on a Mac? I think he has one from his first post.

No.

[1-800-STFU]

Check visualization of music I think the option is called too. If thats on could cause problems.

Also check rendering of album covers

[spliff(TONE)]

Check visualization of music I think the option is called too. If thats on could cause problems.

Also check rendering of album covers

You talking the psychedelic music visualizer thing? If so, I almost never use that anymore. Not sure what you mean by "check rendering of album covers either".

Thanks for the feedback regardless.

[spliff(TONE)]

How much RAM do you have?

4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3. My buddy who works for Apple keeps on insisting that this is the problem and I must upgrade to 8 GB. Honestly though, I don't buy that at all. iTunes really shouldn't be that demanding of an application. Plus, with my exact same setup it had been working flawlessly up until a few months ago.

[1-800-STFU]

4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3. My buddy who works for Apple keeps on insisting that this is the problem and I must upgrade to 8 GB. Honestly though, I don't buy that at all. iTunes really shouldn't be that demanding of an application. Plus, with my exact same setup it had been working flawlessly up until a few months ago.

Your buddy at Apple is stupid 4GB is enough for any casual user. Going over 4 is only for gaming heavy and graphics designing applications. Honestly you probably never top 3RAM usage. Extra would be essentially useless. Your computer would never use it. You can even check physical memory usage under your task manager(or the Apple equivalent).

By rendering albums I'm assuming it means when you play a song the album artwork shows. I just found that during a quick google search.

Reinstalling+updating your OS would probably fix the problem, but I could see that being a last resort judging by how much music you have...

If I can think of any other fixes I'll give ya a heads up

[spliff(TONE)]

If it helps, when I have my web browser going and iTunes playing music my free memory sits at about 2.21 GB. When not spiking crazily, iTunes sits at a reasonable ~5% CPU under these same conditions.

Also, I have about 415 GB of my 1 TB internal hard drive free still.

[spliff(TONE)]

Your buddy at Apple is stupid 4GB is enough for any casual user. Going over 4 is only for gaming heavy and graphics designing applications. Honestly you probably never top 3RAM usage. Extra would be essentially useless.

By rendering albums I'm assuming it means when you play a song the album artwork shows. I just found that during a quick google search

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised that you think this. I've thought the same myself (at least when it comes to this issue). Good friend/person but yeah, I have no clue how he got a good paying job at Apple. His advice reeks of what some generic Apple retail employee trying to make a sale might suggest, yet he has no reason to be take this angle with me.

[1-800-STFU]

If it helps, when I have my web browser going and iTunes playing music my free memory sits at about 2.21 GB. When not spiking crazily, iTunes sits at a reasonable ~5% CPU under these same conditions.

Also, I have about 415 GB of my 1 TB internal hard drive free still.

Which means your computer is only using 1.79GB of ram at a given time....so yeah dont upgrade that.

My suggestion would be a fresh install of itunes, but if I find something else Ill let ya know. There are alot of forum topics with people having this exact problem, all with different solutions.

[spliff(TONE)]

Reinstalling+updating your OS would probably fix the problem, but I could see that being a last resort judging by how much music you have...

If I can think of any other fixes I'll give ya a heads up

Thanks, man. Super appreciate it. I've had this inkling that updating my OS would do the trick as well. It's not expensive or difficult apparently, but I'd rather not do it unless I was very confident it'd do the trick.

I do have everything saved on an external hard drive though, so in theory I shouldn't have much concern of losing data (more specifically: MUSIC) if I where to go that route.

With what I've stated, do you see much of a risk in losing my music if I where to do a clean install of the latest OS?






*while brainstorming today, I realized that these problems may have started around the same time I added an iTunes script (Restore Artwork from Album Folder v2.1). Because of this, I deleted the script a few hours ago and things have been alright....so far. Will have to test it harder by converting some tracks in the next 24-48 hours.