Itunes 'processing file' for hours

I've been having the SAME problem, and nobody's been able to fix it.
I've noticed it is only iTunes Plus songs that get stuck.
It is charging my credit card for songs I never receive.
I am very frustrated with this.
Even worse, there are more and more of these 'undownloadable' songs coming to the store.
Pretty soon I won't be able to download again.

I have the same problem. I downloaded a CD and the first three songs downloaded. Once they were finished downloading they were stuck at "Processing Files" for a rather long period of time (about 45 minutes) and it used up all of my memory. I finally decided to close iTunes hoping it would continue to download after I reopened iTunes. Instead, I lost all three songs. There is no evidence besides my account to show that I even tried downloading them. I continued downloading the CD, two songs downloaded fine, then another three got stuck at "Processing Files". Closed iTunes again, and the rest of the CD downloaded fine. So I lost six songs out of the process. The Check for Purchases doesn't find the songs. Any suggestions about how to prevent it getting stuck or how/if I can get my lost songs back are appreciated.

iTunes temporarily downloads songs into a folder named Downloads. Then at the end, it does that processing stuff and tries to move it into the normal Artist folder.

On XP the path is
C:\Documents and Settings\ username \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Downloads


Does that folder exist? What's in it?


Anyway...I suspect either security software or Windows permissions are preventingiTUnes from creating the Artist folder and moving it to its final place.

Message was edited by: Katrina S.

I'm having similar issues, but I noticed that only certain artists seem to cause the problems. My wife recently bought me an iPod so I went and bought a series of albums by 4 main artists - Pink Floyd, Rush, Jethro Tull and Metallica. All songs by Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull are experiencing long (~5 mins per song) "processing file" delays, none of the Rush and Metallica songs are. This leads me to believe it may not my PC, as I would think all files would have the issue rather than just some. The download speeds are normal, i.e. 15 seconds or so, depending on file size. Also noticed my CPU utilization was pegged at 100% while processing these 2 problematic bands, fluctuated at 30-60% for the others.

Edit: I upgraded to iTunes 8 tonight after I'd already downloaded some songs using 7, only had the problem after the upgrade to 8.

Message was edited by: inoob9170

The same thing is happening to me- very frustrating... some songs download fine, but others (those with longer filesnames it seems) hang on "processing file". Tried everything - removing the temp file, upgrading to itunes 8 from 7, etc. etc. - to no avail. Already booked many purchases of the same song on my account for testing purposes... hope they will be refunded. This is very frustrating! Fix it apple!

I am having this problem also! Has anyone found a solution yet?

I'm an having a similar problem with itunes 8. I didn't purchase the albums from itunes. I am importing a cd I own and it will do the first 2-3 songs fine and them freeze and take HOURS to finish. I just bought my HP and thought this problem stemmed from that, but I talked with HP and itunes has the problem. Does anyone know a fix or are we all going to have to bug Apple on a constant basis to get results?

I am also having this issue. The "Processing File" takes about half an hour for each song, and has crashed several other programs I am trying to also run, including instant messengers, World of Warcraft, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and OpenOffice. I can not do /anything else/ if iTunes is running this "processing File" process. It is HIGHLY Frustrating, and I am glad I read these posts, or else I might have closed iTunes and lost my purchases - considering I don't usually purchase from iTunes, I usually just go buy the CD and rip it to my library, and I believe I will return to that practice. This process is more frustrating than just going out to buy a CD.

I've also been having a similar problem. I have the most recent iTunes release (I believe) 8.0.1.11 - and whenever I purchase an iTunes plus song it takes a good 5 minutes to "process" each track. Oddly enough - this only happens with iTunes plus tracks regular non-plus 'DRM' tracks "process" just fine in a second or so.

The length of the track is also a factor.
To download Plus albums, I start the purchase and go away for three or four hours. iTunes uses most of the CPU so the PC is useless.

I've also noticed that the processing of iTunes Plus files takes much longer than the ordinairy 128kbps files.
Ok, the actual files are a bit bigger in size since It's 256kbps quality, but the processing part should run much smoother and faster anyway.

Here's a page where you/we can get in touch with the iTunes store:
http://www.apple.com/contact/
Look at the Email contact option.

I'm in this same boat. I called Apple Support and the guy had no clue about this problem. But it's real and repeatable!

BINGO!!!!!! You've hit the nail on the head here. It's the 256k songs. I think they're converting on the fly to 128 for the iPod? *

I d/l'd a record w/ 256k files = PROBLEM.
Just d/l'd a free 128k song = SPEEDY.

I sent this thread to iPod support. Let's see if they read it!

*no, I don't think so, I looked @ the file on the iPod and it indicates it's 256...

Same problem. Apple is ignoring issue by sending non-helpful standardized requests. I have a lot of money invested in this proprietary music library, so I don't want to give up Itunes yet...But I'm really close.

Doesn't any one have a solution?

There is NO solution for this issue. I talked to Apple Support for 54 minutes last night. I talked to Second Tier support. There is NO solution and the service rep I had could not find anything on it in Apple's Service Call/Incident Database. He asked his peers. As far as Apple is concerned we are the only one's with this problem.

You're only solice is: go into Windows Task Manager -> Processes -> Right click iTunes.exe and set it's priority to BELOW NORMAL. What this does is: it keeps iTunes from locking up your machine. But it does NOT solve the underlying issue of processing iTunes Plus files.

Again NOTE - this issue is only for iTunes PLUS songs. You can tell what they are by the plus in front of the price in the iTunes store:

+ $0.99 <Buy Song Button>

I suppose your other solution is: don't buy PLUS songs. Or shop at the Amazon music store. Steve Jobs: would you prefer that Windows users buy Zune's and those Samsung phones for their next machines and shop at Amazon? Just curious.