iTunes 8: When downloading album artwork for making thumbnails, it quits?
I just installed iTunes 8, and I tried opening it. It then starts to download the album artwork thumbnails, then all of a sudden a message shows saying,
"iTunes has stopped working, Windows is trying to blablabla.."
Then it forces you to closes the program. I tried pressing cancel before the message pops-up, but when I try to scroll down, it forces me to quit. Any fixes?
Gateway GT5404,
Windows Vista,
32bit, 1.5 GB Memory
If iTunes 8.0 is crashing or freezing while creating artwork thumbnails, you may have a file containing corrupt artwork in your library. The steps to identify that file are somewhat complex and will involve moving and deleting some files, so only attempt them if you are pretty comfortable with performing those tasks.
When you first open iTunes 8, iTunes scans through your album artwork to build a thumbnail cache. You can disable this scan by opening iTunes in Safe Mode.
To open iTunes in Safe Mode:
Mac: Hold down the Command and Option keys while opening iTunes
Windows: Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys while opening iTunes
If you open iTunes in Safe Mode, iTunes will only cache artwork from the album covers that are visible in the iTunes window. So you can view your library in grid view, and scroll down one row at a time. You will see iTunes generating the thumbnails for each of your albums as you scroll down. This may allow you to see which album is being processed by iTunes when the application crashes or hangs. Once you have an idea which files are causing the issue, locate the folder containing the files themselves in Finder or Windows Explorer, create a zip archive of the album, and delete the files themselves:
To create a Zip archive of the album
Mac: Right-click the folder in Finder that contains the album tracks and choose Compress <folder name>
Windows: Right-click the folder in Windows Explorer that contains the album tracks and choose Send to Compressed Zipped folder
After you have created a zip archive backup of the affected files, and deleted the originals, open iTunes normally (not in safe mode). Scroll back down to where you were when the crash occurred. If you got the right files, iTunes should just skip over that album and keep rendering thumbnails without crashing or hanging. If iTunes hangs or crashes right after the album that you thought was causing the issue, it may have actually been that next album, so repeat the zip and delete steps until you have found the problematic album.
If you identify the album that contains the file that causes the problem, we would be interested in getting a copy of the files to try to analyze the issue further. Please email me <royb@apple.com> and I will tell you how to send in the affected files for analysis.
If iTunes 8.0 is crashing or freezing while creating artwork thumbnails, you may have a file containing corrupt artwork in your library. The steps to identify that file are somewhat complex and will involve moving and deleting some files, so only attempt them if you are pretty comfortable with performing those tasks.
When you first open iTunes 8, iTunes scans through your album artwork to build a thumbnail cache. You can disable this scan by opening iTunes in Safe Mode.
To open iTunes in Safe Mode:
Mac: Hold down the Command and Option keys while opening iTunes
Windows: Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys while opening iTunes
If you open iTunes in Safe Mode, iTunes will only cache artwork from the album covers that are visible in the iTunes window. So you can view your library in grid view, and scroll down one row at a time. You will see iTunes generating the thumbnails for each of your albums as you scroll down. This may allow you to see which album is being processed by iTunes when the application crashes or hangs. Once you have an idea which files are causing the issue, locate the folder containing the files themselves in Finder or Windows Explorer, create a zip archive of the album, and delete the files themselves:
To create a Zip archive of the album
Mac: Right-click the folder in Finder that contains the album tracks and choose Compress <folder name>
Windows: Right-click the folder in Windows Explorer that contains the album tracks and choose Send to Compressed Zipped folder
After you have created a zip archive backup of the affected files, and deleted the originals, open iTunes normally (not in safe mode). Scroll back down to where you were when the crash occurred. If you got the right files, iTunes should just skip over that album and keep rendering thumbnails without crashing or hanging. If iTunes hangs or crashes right after the album that you thought was causing the issue, it may have actually been that next album, so repeat the zip and delete steps until you have found the problematic album.
If you identify the album that contains the file that causes the problem, we would be interested in getting a copy of the files to try to analyze the issue further. Please email me <royb@apple.com> and I will tell you how to send in the affected files for analysis.
Thanks, but i'm trying to look for where all the Album Artwork is stored? I'm looking through my iTunes folder and there is a folder that says "Album Artwork", but its just random numbers that go to more folders with numbers. But it wont show me which artwork to delete. Thanks!
Roy, this is a serious error. I am facing similar problems.
I tried following your steps, but they did not help.
I can't access anything on my iTunes library. Each time I remove something, then the next item on the list is making the system stuck.
Sometimes it is album artwork, sometimes it is movies artwork. I removed the entire Album Artwork folder just to check - it did not help either.
I tried downgrading to iTunes 7.7, but then I couldn't sync the iPhone anymore due to "Sync services dataclass could not be loaded". I guess iTunes 8 already made changes to the system.
Removing the album artwork will not help, because it is not where the corrupt data is. The album artwork folder contains a cache that iTunes creates of the artwork embedded in your music and movie files themselves. If iTunes is hanging or crashing while extracting that artwork, iot indicates that the music and movie files themselves contain corruption, not any files in the Album Artwork folder.
First - I never got the app quitting, it just hung there for a long long time. Over an hour actually.
What I did was simply go to sleep. 🙂 In the morning when I returned, all was ok.
I have no idea why it was taking so long to process the library. I have a rather small library and it appeared to be stuck on a single song each time, it did not progress.
When will Apple resolve this problem with a proper update or patch? I spent much valuable time, but don't seem to get the download of album artwork going again. Everytime iTunes crashes!
