iTunes Freezing after 10.5.5 update.

Count me on these.... I can check the music store logged in.... but as I have been aware, it crashes only when I am playing music, when I scroll down to the bottom... death... anyone else checked this??

I'm starting to believe that the problem is related to the Cover Flow style of images that Apple uses on some of the store pages. I can use the store if I just do searches, and I can stay in the App Store section with never a problem. It's only when I visit a page that has Cover Flow that I experience the crash/lockup. The main page of the store has Cover Flow, but it's way at the of the page, and thus off the screen. I can use this page o.k., unless I scroll up and down a bunch. Then it will eventually lock up. The TV Shows main page almost always locks up within 5-10 seconds, as Cover Flow is used very close to the top of the page. This is the only thing I can find in common with the crashes. It has nothing to do with Safari being open, nor whether music is playing, nor AppleTV.

I believe you´ve found the key issue, every time the store shows or at least tries to show a cover flow... it crashes... after double checking, when there is no cover flow, there is no problem at all....

I think, coverflow could be right. Visiting Australian store doesn't have too many cover flow pages. When I visit Oz store, it doesn't crash.
But as soon as I jump to US Store, there are many pages with coverflow and it crashes.

Also, when a crash happens, is it worth waiting for 20 30 mins for mac to recover automatically, or is restart using powerbutton is the only option.

Once the crash occurs, you have to do a hard restart by powering off. The Mac will never recover.

I was using a Logitech MX700 mouse when it happened on my machine. I changed to the Mighty Mouse with no effect i.e. the problem still occurred.

BTW I noticed that it seemed to be machine dependent i.e. The store worked fine with the following machines: MB Pro, MB Air, iMac G5. It did not work on my 24" 2.8 GHz iMAc.

The symptoms were always the same: Goto the iTunes store and scroll up and down the main page. The machine would then freeze and require a power off and on to reboot. If you waited without powering off, the machine would not recover (I tried waiting for 1 hour). If you did not scroll on the iTunes store page (front page or TV Store page) it would not cause the lock up.

The problem resolved itself for me by removing a music track that could not sync with one of my Apple TV boxes since it was not authorised to play on that Apple TV. I could not purchase another copy using the account that did play on that Apple TV box since the track was no longer available.

The track is still in my playlists and music library, I just removed it from the playlist that syncs with this particular Apple TV. I have another Apple TV where everything works fine even with this music track.

In my investigation I found the following:
1. It did not matter whether iTunes store opened immediately upon opening iTunes or not.
2. If you did not scroll in the main store page, you could exit with no ill effects and the machine did not lock up.
3. The problem appeared after I had spent an evening resolving issues with one of my Apple TVs not playing music tracks purchased on another of my Apple ID accounts.
4. It was not triggered by the upgrade to 10.5.5 from 10.5.4
5. I tried it out on other machines with both 10.5.5 and 10.5.4 and I could not duplicate the issue.
6. I tried it with a Logitech and Apple Mighty Mouse and found no differences in behaviour.
7. I did not repair disk permissions since the problem "disappeared" before I could look at that option suggested by some subscribers.
8. I did not try to put back the music track into the playlist that seemed to cause the issues to see if the problem re-occurred.

I hope this helps someone out there. My suspicion is that is to do with the change in DRM with Apple TVs that seems to have occurred between the purchase of my first and second Apple TV. Both are at the same software rev level (The first one was purchased when they were first introduced and was upgraded from Rev1.0), but I notice that immediately I open iTunes, it goes to the store to authorise the second Apple TV box and not the first one. Why??? I have no idea.

Does Apple care if their users suddenly stop using iTune because they are afraid to turn it on?
I have to do a repair on two of my hard drives already, and they contain critical files to my projects (if they are lost, I am screwed). First time the system freeze on me, I was in the middle of working on a sequence in FCP. No warning, the whole system just freeze. Cut it down to running iTune by itself, still freeze.
What is Apple doing about it? As, obviously, I am not alone in this.
<edited by host>

Hey MightyMac,

Verify the Date & Time along with Time Zone are correct. Go to System Preferences> Date & Time.

Also verify iTunes is set to display the correct country. Go to iTunes> iTunes Store> Click the My Store drop-down at the bottom center of the iTunes Store page.

Do you see this issue in another User account? Create another User account in System Preferences> Accounts, click the lock to make changes, then click the plus to create another account.

Try to completely remove iTunes and then reinstall it as described here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1224

Jason

Further to my earlier post, I've been running for three days now with Intego's NetBarrier X5 turned of and have had no problem with either iTunes or AppleTV. It has been a pleasure to be able to use both for the first time without having to force quit every five minutes. If it turn it back on iTunes freezes in a matter of moments and the AppleTV has to be rebooted.

If there are other users in this thread using X5. Can they try disabling it and let us know what happens?

As I said earlier NetBarrier X5 turned out to be the culprit for some users when Time Machine wouldn't back-up so could it be that Intego has to solve this problem, not Apple?

I RESOLVED MY PROBLEM!!!!

Okay, here's the deal, the guy from iPod Tech Support suggested that I try running iTunes from a different account on my computer. I did, and IT WORKED FINE!

So, instead of creating a NEW user and start from scratch, I used AppCleaner to help me locate all the files and directories associated with iTunes. I UNselected EVERYTHING that are in the root directories (anything that begins with a "/" and not a "~"). I then deleted these files. Finally, I restarted iTunes, go through all the mumble jumble that as if this is the first time I've used iTunes, let it relocate everything, login to my account, and EVERYTHING NOW BACK TO NORMAL!

Hope this help at least some of the people here.

God bless.

Message was edited by: C Lai

That's great C Lai and I truly appreciate your findings as well as the others who were able to band-aid this problem, for the rest of us who don't give a rats behind about the DNA of our computers cause we just want them to work as advertised, I suggest that Apple send a fix as an update and I also suggest that you folks send Apple a reply to your dissatisfaction of the Itunes upgrade. That is my HO and I'm sticking with it. At this point I still have faith in Apple to rectify the problem, I just wish they would hurry up with it. All this kris crossing, deleting this and adding that is time consuming and bs for us average users, also confusing.

Yep, I tried a second user account on my computer today (one that doesn't have a library associated with it) and sure enough the iTunes store works fine: no crashes. The problem is obviously some corruption in the iTunes prefs or library files. It looks as though the library needs to be rebuilt. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do this, as I think I'm going to lose a lot of the descriptions for my movies and TV shows.