iTunes 8.0 - Genius - unknown error 4010

just wanted to chime in -- same problem, can't get it to work - have tried uninstalling, reinstalling, praying 🙂 .... I have 400gigs plus.

Any word on an update or fix???

Using XML Validator found ~30 songs out of 11,000 plus with bad TAG UTF characters

Genius is now working

Got it working. Didn't use a .xml validator. I have an artist in the library called Ryoji Ikeda, gracenote named this artist for some of the CD's '池田亮司' and within some of CD's he was also named in this manner as the album artist. (also cropped up on some compilations in this manner).

All I did is simply narrowed down the entries in the search field and re-named the titles. Genius is now working. The library still contains non-gracenote entries (vinyl and cassette rip's) but picks up all genuine entries.

i'd love one of those emails or calls becuase mine is not working after many many many attempts at all of the above listed "fixes" (not that there are any)

I'm willing to bet that while fixing bad XML codes might help, any solutions posted so far that have worked have been coincidental. Unless you can definitively show that the server is timing out while choking on bad XML (or missing tracks, or large libraries, etc.) and/or "4010" is a server-has-timed-out-because-of-bad-data related error code and post a fix works every time, you are just taking shots in the dark.

FWIW: I have tried the Validator suggestion as well as removing missing tracks (both were clean), and I'm still receiving the same error. I'll try again some time when the server is possibly under a lighter load.

Otherwise I'll just wait patiently for Apple to fix this free feature and play with Pandora Jam. 😉

For me it wasn't a timeout problem, it was an issue of the server very quickly responding with an error code. This was extremely consistent and persisted for days. Fixing the two UTF encoding errors in my database made it immediately work without any trouble. And there was this EXACT SAME PROBLEM on the 5th-generation iPod, where malformed UTF would put the iPod into a perpetual reboot loop - and fixing the malformed tags would fix this immediately. It's pretty easy to see a pattern here, and sure, while there's no absolute proof without seeing the related source code, it's good enough for me.

That said, after spending all that effort I've discovered that Genius is basically no better than playing my whole library on shuffle, and it's not likely to get any better since the data which seeds it is basically "if person A has songs A and B and person B has songs A and B then both people are likely to like songs A and B." It doesn't really, you know, DO anything to rate things on a per-playlist basis, or at least not yet.

I had the same problem of the dreaded 4010. After looking at this website http://www.jonbu.com/2008/09/13/itunes-genius-unknown-error-4010/, I was able to determine that my problem was a single offending track that contained problematic characters in the tags. These characters were fouling up my iTunes Music Library.xml file causing the 4010 error. Once I edited the tags via iTunes removing problematic characters (ie "?") my iTunes Music Library.xml file could pass the validator test and the activating Genius process sailed right through. Cheers!

The XML fix worked for me, too. I was able to do it without downloading validators or editors.

I found my iTunes Music Library.xml file using Spotlight. I opened it using Firefox 3.

That quickly returned an error message saying the xml was flawed. It showed me a string of characters and indicated that they were Genre tags.

I sorted my library by Genre and looked at either end for similar characters. There it was: Dirty Projectors "Rise Above" (a beautiful song, FWIW).

I opened the track in iTunes and renamed the genre "Indie Rock" (sorry, Dirty Projectors).

(I then tried to open the iTunes Library.xml file in Firefox again. It got hung up. I moved on.)

I deleted the iTunes Genius Library database that Genius had compiled and started the process over. It worked.

Here's an interesting reply. I have a 120Gb library with about 13k songs in it. I was trying to enable Genius while "on the road", from a hotel at night, letting it run overnight for almost 10 nights in a row, and it never did complete step 2.

I got home to my local network, didn't change a thing, and it updated successfully in about an hour.

Interesting... I wonder if it could have something to do with unique proxy/firewall requirements that a hotel network would be preventing....

Regardless, I didn't change ANYTHING, and it works now just fine.

Steve

ok i have the answer.
i went to the apple shop to find out if anything could be done and they didn't have a clue, they said that apple probably knew about it and that it would be fixed ASAP, but if im guessing as you on this page you want it now.

not everyone is a tech geek so it took me ages to find out how to do it, but its not that hard if its simplified. you need to go on one website and ull have genius working in no time.
as may other people have posted, it is a problem with the XML file which is located in the itunes folder on you computer.
i uploaded it to this site http://www.validome.org/xml/validate/ it then gives you a line and a column where the error is on the XML file.
open the XML file in textedit on mac then go to edit > find > line, type in the line number and itll take you to you error, it should appear high lighted. mine was a little no entry sign :S, look around this to find the song that is causing the problem, if you know how to delete the ID3 tag or what ever than go ahead, i didn't so i deleted the song and then deleted the XML file from my computer so itunes had to recreate it with out the song been present. then load itunes and genius should work fine. i dunno why it does work but just managed to get mine working, and it only took about 5 mins.

the genius is pretty good, just hope it was worth your wait.

the problem to me is weird music names. I had a chinese/japanese character track names, i renamed them 1,2,3 etc and now it works. so strange strings could be the problem. i tried about twenty times before and it didn't work...

then it did.

genius

I am having the exact same problem as ChrisMacg (and many other posters).

On my new iMac (w/ 100GB+ library), connecting to internet over ethernet (not wifi) to DSL, I get the "network connection timed out" error on step three of the Genius process. I have tried this a few dozen times over the past week - same error every time.

My laptop, which has a very small library, also got through the genius signup on the first try (using crappy hotel wifi).

Typo in footer on my message above - I am actually running 10.5.5 of course

Oh man. This is killing me.

I am fundamentally a non-techie but have invested literally hundreds of hours in the last 5 years troubleshooting never-my-fault earthshattering problems in various macs in increasingly byzantine and techie ways... often probs that not even applecare phone support and the genius bar could solve. But I have run out of creativity in overcoming these probs and have started to degenerate into near paranoia that any change (or lack of change) could make me lose all of my data forever.

And now, if I am going to have to learn how to "validate XML files" using some third party app and resolve "UTF encoding errors" (whatever they are) just to be able to activate a cool new itunes feature that every journalist says "just works" and raves about, I am going to go completely insane.

Thanks, Apple! No need to worry about the global financial crisis - you have rendered me into a babbling idiot just by releasing a new "feature:... 🙂

OK, I have now checked my iTunes Library w/ the Validator program, and it tells me the xml file is valid (didn't have to make any changes), but the Genius setup still hangs.

I do have a lot of song titles that are in (I assume correctly formed) Chinese, Japanese and other foreign language characters. More or less all of them pulled the names from the GracenoteTM database when I converted my CDs using iTunes. Several other posters have said that they just named their foreign-named tracks all 1, 2, 3 etc... this would screw up my library (not to mention taking forever), so I don't want to do this.

Can someone at Apple please explain if foreign language track names are really the problem? Or is Apple's network just clogged? Thanks in advance