Q: itunes 11.4 crashes when syncing apps to ipad / iphone

II've been having the same problems since upgrading my 3rd generation iPad and iPhone 5 to IOS 8.  I have

the same issue with my iPhone 6 Plus.

iTunes 11.4 worked normally with my IOS 7 devices.  I synced normally just before upgrading to IOS 8.

I was hoping that iTunes 12.0.1 which just came out would resolve the issue.  It did not. 

I'm running on Windows Vista with my iTunes library stored on a Synology NAS.

You're completly right... 12.0.1. still doesn't fix the problem.

Unbelievable that Apple doesn't even seem to care about this problem!

This is quite shocking... If there are people with developer accounts it would be a good idea to file a bug report with the apple bug reporting tool. I already did and my case was combined with an already existing case. As more cases come in - as higher priority the bug will get. Unfortunately there is no way to get any inernal info on the current status of the bug...

I agree, this is disgusting.

I had problems synching all my devices as soon as itunes 11.4 came out.

I uninstalled it and reinstalled the previous itunes version and everything worked fine again.

Then I purchased the iphone 6 and waited for itunes 12 to come out to fix this sick bug...it came out, I installed it, same problem.

I called Apple twice yesterday, got nowhere.

The new phone is sitting in my drawer because there is no way to transfer everything from my old phone to the new one. I am absolutely over it.

Like yourselves, I too have my library on a NAS drive. Never had an issue at all until 11.4 and still with 12.0.1.

Apple says they will "escalate" the problem, whatever that means. Hurry up and fix the thing!!!

Itunes just crashes when trying to sync apps to a device.

Hey Kids,

I joined this thread early (3 weeks ago?) and am ultra-disappointed, like all of you, that Apple hasn't fixed it. But I'm trying to do one of the 2 possible work-arounds suggested here and need a bit of assistance.

Many of you solved the problem by renaming your network drive from a name (mine currently called "NAS" - very simple) to a letter. I started to do that last night but it got late and I gave up. My question: for those of you who got that to work, was it really as simple as that? Renaming your drive from a "name" to a letter (or just using one of the default letters that Windows uses)?

The alternative is to move everything back on to my computer's local C drive (yuch).

Thanks,

Greg

I don't have this issue, but perhaps they mean assigning a drive letter to the NAS, This can usually be done in Windows Explorer or using the command prompt. The tricky bit is persuading iTunes to access your content on the different path. See Make a split library portable for some ideas.

tt2

waverider627

My experience has been that is quite easy (per my most recent posts) with iTunes v 11.4 to work around the problem by deleting the apps with UNC mapping from iTunes library (always as prompted to keep the actual file)  and add back / re-import via drive letter per my previous and most recent posts. So long as these steps are performed all my devices sync without issue (minus the occasional slip-up when I forget to delete and re-import the apps following update). I have not changed my underlying default iTunes media folder location mapping .. this remained UNC to my NAS throughout this problem. In short what this deleting and re-importing just the apps does is changes the file mapping stored within the iTunes library file from UNC to drive letter. Why this works, several have speculated but for me this solves the problem. Yes it is annoying and apple should be embarrassed they both introduced and also failed to fix the bug (I have not confirmed myself but others posters say it is still an issue) but as a workaround it not all that bad. I just do it once per week and then sync my devices. In between i just directly download updates to the various devices as needed.

Today i downloaded and installed iTunes v 12.01. I was able to sync using the same technique. I had 20+ apps that had to be deleted and re-imported per my previous comments. Next app update i will purposefully NOT update to reconfirm iTunes continues to crash as others have already posted.

One thing I will mention related to steps I previously posted is under v 12.01 apple has changed the look of the UI access to the apps and in particular the list view. It no longer is directly on the tool bar next to updates but in the upper right says apps with down arrow .. if you click on the down arrow it reveals the list view "App List" .. then just right click as before to add the Date Modified .. then sort by that

As a final point i want to mention is for me iTunes 12.01 seems slower than 11.4. And right after starting it for the first time it locked up and i had to end task. Once i restarted things seemed to be ok.  I have synced 1 device so far.

waverider627

iTunes 12 is now out, good luck everyone, hopefully Apple has fixed!

Yes 12 is out, let's hope this fixes the Sync issues between Itunes and NAS

Please everyone report back with findings

I'm following lottytx's outline above and confirming that it works.

Reiterating: It looks like it is only app file references that include UNC paths, eg, on my Netgear ReadyNAS: \\nas\media\Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications\etc. Mapping the "iTunes" folder to a drive letter in windows creates this valid path that doesn't break the sync: N:\Mobile Applications.

Deleting my app library and reinstalling it from N:\Mobile Applications fixes the problem in 11.4. I have also confirmed that iTunes 12 also works with the drive letter reference.

To ensure that new apps are downloaded with the drive letter reference, open your iTunes library file (*.itl) using the drive letter path. This will also apply to any new music you might include in your library. Once Apple fixes this and you choose to delete the mapped file letter, this path will be invalid. You'll need to again add again the apps and new music, but by this time you will be well practised!

Other applications and devices that already reference the UNC path correctly (eg: Sonos) will continue to reference the path correctly. The drive letter map is only for iTunes in Windows so that syncing with a connected device works. Aha - this means I can go and purchase an iPhone 6!

Windows 8.1Pro     iTunes 12.0.1     iTunes data on Synology NAS    

I came across this problem while trying to restore my iPad from iTunes and it crashed every time when 'syncing apps' started, got the same "iTunes has stopped working" message as the OP.  It resulted in all my apps being greyed out and with status of "waiting..." on the iPad.

I was after a simple solution that did not require me to move my library from my NAS or change paths etc, hoping that Apple will fix this in the next release.

I liked the idea of rolling back iTunes to a previous stable version that did not have this problem syncing apps with NAS libraries, so I uninstalled all iTunes and associated programs and tried both 11.3.0.54 and 11.3.1.2 versions of iTunes from glowfish's site, but both versions of iTunes would not run, they gave the error "gnsdk_manager.dll is missing

Apple tech support was remarkably unhelpful (via chat) and was not aware of the problem.

My workaround was to erase all data from my iPad and restore via iCloud which worked fine, I just won't sync via iTunes until I hear that this has been fixed!

Sigh.

Win 7 Pro with iTunes 12.0.1.26 (although had this problem with 11.4) and iPhone 6

After several reads of posts among users here and failing - I have tried a variant of what worked for others, particularly Lottytx.  Thought I'd join the forum in the hope that what worked for me may work for someone else.

Basically I had tried installing all apps I wanted to keep direct to the phone via the phone's app store.  When I tried syncing again everything screwed up again.  I was left with more greyed out apps on the phone, iTunes crashing and so on.  When I tried deleting / reinstalling problem apps (ie: the apps iTunes got stuck on) iTunes just cracked it at the 'preparing to copy apps' stage anyway - without giving me an actual app it was copying.

So what I did from there:

1. In iTunes, I went to app view (of apps on the computer, not the device) and deleted all the apps from the library - but made sure I didn't delete them from the actual disk

2. In Windows Explorer, I found my 'mobile applications' folder and moved every file to a different folder ("old mobile apps" or whatever).

3. In iTunes, transferred purchases from my iPhone 6 (although nothing actually transferred)

4. On the phone, I deleted all the greyed out apps and installed only the apps I wanted to keep (from the phone's iTunes store again)

5. In iTunes, synced the iPhone 6.

Note: Because of the well documented crash (ie: the point of this thread) when copying apps, I still didn't have any music or movies transferred across because the apps transfer before music / movies.

The sync in step 5 made the apps go through without a problem which then allowed all the movies and music to copy yeah!

6. In iTunes, Backup the iPhone 6. Selecting 'yes' to the prompt "Do you wish to backup your apps"

Note: This then began copying ALL apps on the phone back to the original 'Mobile Applications".

Moving the apps to an 'old folder' just meant I had a backup of these in case I wanted to reinstate them if this hadn't have worked.  My itunes folder is on a server share as \\servername\itunes

If this works for just one other person I would be happy.

I would be much happier if Apple fixed this incredibly frustrating and time consuming problem!!

Cybermagic and others I am so grateful for your comments on this. I have spent HOURS trying to fix this problem since my iPhone 6 arrived on Friday. My apps just would not update and were all greyed out "awaiting update". I decided yesterday after comments on another forum to switch back to my old iphone 5, upgrade that to the new ios / iTunes prior to migrating to the iphone 6 and in the process of doing that the old iphone reset back to "connect to iTunes" with iTunes no longer recognizing it when I connected it. Then tonight after upgrading the new iphone to the new 8.1 iOS I was still getting iTunes crashing when apps were being copied across and then to compound matters further my new iPhone reset itself completely and I lost everything!! As I had reinstalled iTunes I had lost my backups in the process, hence all my text messages going back years have been erased and can't be recovered. The problem as I discovered after finding this thread is that my iTunes library is on my NAS drive. I've copied across the .itl file and though iTunes still crashes after loading a few apps rather than at the beginning it is clear this is because the link to the later apps is to the NAS drive.

This is an incredible mess-up by Apple, I can't believe that even the latest update does not fix this major problem that must affect thousands of users. So I've lost all my text messages but at least I know the cause now, which is some consolation, so many thanks all.

Well, I just wasted another 2+ hours. I, too, was not able to sync my iPhone 6 to iTunes 11.4 or now 12. I had my iTunes directory on my Windows 7 C drive, but all my music files on my NAS. I moved all the music back to a new directory on my C drive (no more NAS) and "cleaned things up" in it. My plan was to NOT let iTunes manage my music any more (did a crappy job in the first place).

Well, now my apps sync fine, but i can not get any of my music to sync. iTunes doesn't crash any more (yeah?), but...I can't sync my music? I went so far as to delete (well, I renamed) my iTunes directory and started from scratch. I re-imported all my music, but still, no syncing music.

What a PoS. I'm SOOOO frustrated, especially with the lack of support from Apple.