itunes genius error -8753 anyone?

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itunes genius error -8753 anyone?

right after genius finishes the first step (gathering information) and starts sending my information to apple the following error message shows up;

genius cant be updated... an unknown error has occured.
(-8753)

i tried ;

-wait and try again (for 4 months now)
-deleting cookies
-deleting plist files
-deleting genius file
-apple "geniuses" at the genius bar in zurich didnt know what to do.
-apple europe support has never heard of this error..

i created a new library and there it works fine. so it cant be my network or something. the error must be somewhere in my music or my library file.

anyone?

btw: i have 55k songs. all covered, rated and many intelligent playlists.
so deleting and re-adding the music (loosing library information) is not an option.

thanks in advance!

Mac Book Pro 15, Mac OS X (10.5.8), itunes 9.0.3

Posted on Feb 7, 2010 9:54 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 11, 2010 10:47 AM in response to tomgreenius

I've got the same error. I've got about 64,000 songs. Maybe it's got something to do with the quantity of songs, though it worked as recently as 60,000 or so, about a week ago. So... anyone... ?

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Answer 2

Apr 17, 2010 9:37 AM in response to tomgreenius

I have been having the same problem for about a month, despite having "only" 21,159 songs in my library. (I thought that was a lot until I started reading about these genius errors and found that many people who are having this problem have well over 60,000 songs!)

I've tried reinstalling iTunes, rebuilding my library, using Time Machine to restore my entire music folder (including iTunes library) from a date when I know that genius was working, and parsing the XML file to make sure there were no errors in it. None of that did anything to make the genius feature work. I suppose I'll go to the Apple Store to see if the geniuses there can figure it out, but after reading that so many other people have tried this to no avail I feel like I'll just be wasting my time.

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Answer 3

tomgreenius Author

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Apr 19, 2010 8:05 AM in response to coachinberkeley

my genius still does not work. five months now. always hoping that the next itunes-update might fix it.
i guess there are just not enough people with this error, so that apple would care....

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Answer 4

Apr 25, 2010 3:50 PM in response to tomgreenius

a bump from me.. having the same problem - brand new computer so not sure what is happening. Maybe it is an account setting with apple.com? Please fix apple!

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Answer 5

tomgreenius Author

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May 3, 2010 4:39 AM in response to thegrundy

Another update, but error -8753 still not fixed. come on, apple!

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Answer 6

tomgreenius Author

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May 5, 2010 1:23 PM in response to tomgreenius

ok. mine does work again now. five months of waiting and trying.
all it was was some strange symbols, somewhere in my files. in my case it was these some strange squares. i can not paste them (i guess the posting/forum settings block them, just like genius 😉

i found them by manually searching through my library. needle-in-the-haystack-style. no other way worked out unfortunately.
for other users with the same problem and probably with different symbols blocking the genius update mechanism i propose to do the same.
Find out when genius last worked, sort by date and look through the information of the songs (coment, album artist etc.)
people who have found theirs should post them for other users.
also for apple support, who haven't been able to fix this yet.

puh. finally. good luck to everyone finding out what symbol is stopping your library from connecting to genius...

ill go get a beer now.

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Answer 7

May 7, 2010 5:22 AM in response to tomgreenius

I can confirm this worked for me... Apple please patch this so future users do not have to experience this same issue. It took me a solid couple of hours to go through my whole library and find the erroneous files!!

THANKS tomgreenius!!

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Answer 8

tomgreenius Author

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May 7, 2010 5:44 AM in response to thegrundy

This might help too, to find them faster:

sort the comment, composer, album artist etc. alphabetically.(one after the other) The buggy symbols will show up at the top/or bottom in the certain category.

(Unless of course there are other letters in front of that certain symbol.)
if that is the case. all that helps is go through all of it manually.

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Answer 9

May 7, 2010 5:47 AM in response to tomgreenius

yep mine were at the end of the artist - so no luck with sorting in alphabetical order! cheers.

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Answer 10

May 11, 2010 8:46 AM in response to tomgreenius

Finally Found The Hack. I Suggest Scrolling Through Each Song In Category View. Sort And Look Through Each Category At Once. Found Mine In An Eminem Song. Good Luck. (PS... You Don't Have To Do This But I Made Sure Only One Category Viewable At A Time. Best Way To Look Through A Million Songs Without Getting Confused.

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Answer 11

v1K

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Jun 5, 2010 3:55 PM in response to tomgreenius

Dear beloved Apple / iTunes / Genius community,
here is the solution. After trying many different ways I think I found the way out of your Genius misery.

1) Seach for the songs with the SYMBOL that looks like a square that is half white half black with a capital slash / in the left white half)

2) Delete all songs with that symbol or try renaming

VOILÁ 🙂

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Answer 12

Churaich

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Aug 9, 2010 12:20 PM in response to v1K

Dear v1K,
Thank you for posting the solution to this problem. I found my symbols in the Comments section. Then Genius worked for my 24,000 songs.

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