Itunes 10 homesharing not working

I had the same problem, could sync with WIn7, intermitently with VISTA, but just solved it when I disconnecte the LAN from my PC and reconnected it through WIFI, just like the ipad2 was.

I don't know why through the LAN (on the same router) Home Sharing died intermmitently.

I have a solution for those of you who have multiple wireless routers as I do. My MAC and PC were connected to two different wireless routers. Once I connected both to the same wireless router, all worked fine!

Something that would be helpful I think for a lot of people:

If anyone actually has this going on Windows 7/Vista and it works all the time - please list your Router model.

Sometimes this seems to be caused by problems with services starting and firewall rules, but for some of us no matter if all that is correct it still doesn't work.

That seems to be because of Apple's Bonjour implementation using a rather unusual/exotic/possibly non-standard multicast routing as its backbone, and a lot of routers aversion to the way that Apple's programming interacts with it.

So how about it - anyone who has this working care to share what their router is?

I was having the problem that the home sharing icon would disappear after clicking done. It seems it was a modem problem for myself. I have a belkin play modem and there is a firmware update that appears to fix the problem. Download the latest firmware from the website and install. Do not use the firmware update in the router settings to find the update.

I had just the same problem for ages!! Sharing between ethernet cable network and Wi-fi didn't work at all. Today I took a look into my D-Link DIR-300 Router configuration, and tried deactivating "multicast streams" in Advanced - Advanced network, and VOILA!

Now Home sharing between my iMac, my Apple TV (both connected through Ethernet), and my iPhone and iPad (Wifi) is working like a charm.

I hope this works for all of you people.

Hi Guys

Check the 'Understanding Home Sharing' file from Apple http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3819 and you may easily miss that you need to be signed into each computer with THE SAME ID. This was the change in the latest iTunes update that caused me an afternoon of frustration and it was that simple to resolve in the end.

Happy Holidays!

Thanks Helen, but that's not a problem for the most of us. The problem is (was in my case), that even using the same ID, devices plugged to wired network cannot see the wireless devices such as IPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Remote app couldn't control them.

I found out the solution described in my previous post, and I hope that will be useful for all people out there dealing with the same issue.

I think your solution is probably pretty close to spot on Alvaro. Problem is that not all routers have that setting for Multicast, or if they do it doesn't work the same way. Multicast is not very well understood by programmers, much less end users, and people having to mess with those settings means that it just isn't going to work for a lot of people, sadly. What I ended up doing was to just get iTunes Match, which costs $25 and has its own set of problems, but does allow at least for you to get to all of your music from everywhere. Maybe that's what Apple wanted people like me to do all along!

I also have struggled with this homesharing problem. (Win7 itunes 10.5.1) I followed the trick that worked for yyzgwm

In Remove Programs (via Control Panel), selected Bonjour, click Repair button at top of list. Nothing appeared to change but after a reboot Homesharing was working fine.

techboy776 suggests just restarting the Bonjour service (Ctl+Alt+Del, Task Manager, Sevices tab, right click). Maybe that is effectively all I did with the first trick

By the way, I had already tried many of the other tricks that had worked for some people: disable/modify firewall, disable anti-virus, stopped,restarted homesharing and rebooted all computers, check bonjour was running in the list of processes. I had not yet rebooted my Buffalo router (WZR-HP-G300NH in case anyone is interested). But for me, at least, this was not necessary.

This also seems to have fixed wifi sync on my iphone which never seemed to work as expected.

Why does Apple make this stuff so mysterious and magical.

I did finally figure out how to fix this issue and it was pretty much what I suspected. Its not a pretty picture though. I replaced the router with a new Asus RT-N16 (had been using a Trendnet TEW-639GR). Boom! Sharing works perfectly. Probably the new router supports multicast routing better, which makes Bonjour work better. I was going to buy it anyway, because I wanted some additional features included and a faster router processor, but if you really need Homesharing to work and are at your wits end, it *might* be the router.

The following by dstumpy worked for me too. After about 3 hours of pulling my hair out, I finally found this post. ARGH! Thanks for finding this solution. (I have iTunes 10.5.2, Win 7 64-bit, Apple TV Gen 1, which was the thing I couldn't "see" in iTunes anymore.)

dstumpy wrote:

I also have struggled with this homesharing problem. (Win7 itunes 10.5.1) I followed the trick that worked for yyzgwm

In Remove Programs (via Control Panel), selected Bonjour, click Repair button at top of list. Nothing appeared to change but after a reboot Homesharing was working fine.

techboy776 suggests just restarting the Bonjour service (Ctl+Alt+Del, Task Manager, Sevices tab, right click). Maybe that is effectively all I did with the first trick

By the way, I had already tried many of the other tricks that had worked for some people: disable/modify firewall, disable anti-virus, stopped,restarted homesharing and rebooted all computers, check bonjour was running in the list of processes. I had not yet rebooted my Buffalo router (WZR-HP-G300NH in case anyone is interested). But for me, at least, this was not necessary.

This also seems to have fixed wifi sync on my iphone which never seemed to work as expected.

Why does Apple make this stuff so mysterious and magical.

FWIW, and to save others -- TRY doing the Bonjour trick FIRST. I tried

Factory Reset Apple TV

Reinstall iTunes / Repair iTunes

Link/Unlink

Turn on/off home home sharing

reset every router/modem, etc., in the house, reboot everything under the sun, unplug everything, and a whole host of things.

The above fixed it instantaneously.

Found the solution. I am 1000% sure this is correct. I have been troubleshooting this for two days. There are pieces here that are correct in these posts, it's just a matter of assembling them and understanding them. Here goes:

My setup:

- I have a Win 7 64 pc, latest updates. Windows firewall ON.

- I have 3 iPad 2's, 1 iPhone.

The problem:

- I decided to enable Home Sharing so I could share the music and videos from the iTunes on my Win 7 pc with my other devices (iPads, iPhone and soon.....Apple TV's).

- Worked for a few hours and then mysteriously stopped working for good. Rebotted the router, reinstalled iTunes, all the suggestions. Nothing worked.

The Solution:

- I began searching the forums and trying everything suggested. Everything! Nothing worked.

- Here's what I discovered and I promise you it's the solution (at least it was mine):

- First of all like one of the previous posters suggested, when you click DONE after enabling Home Sharing, the Shared category on the left pane in iTunes IS SUPPOSED TO DISAPPEAR. I agree that it is a bad design. The only time it reappears is when one of the other devices actually connects to your iTunes and starts sharing (streaming)...until then the "SHARED" group will remain HIDDEN.

-As many prior posters have stated the actual problem lies within your router (doesn't matter whether you're connected wirelessly or whether you're wired). The issue is Multi-Casting....or as some routers refer to it RIP.

-The reason that some posters have had success with rebooting routers, etc, imho, is that there are so many routers out there that some routers might reset or automatically enable the multicast feature....other routers don't.

-The problem is your ROUTER.

-log into your router and do some poking around. You will have to know the login and password and ip address (192.168.1.1....or whatever).

- In my router, a Netgear N600, model WNDR3400, I had to go into Advanced, then LAN Setup. Then I had to do 2 things: 1.) I had to make sure that RIP Direction was set to "BOTH" and just as importantly 2.) make sure RIP version was set to RIP_2M....which is what actually sets it to "MULTI-CASTING".

- each router is different so you will have to look at your router's documentation, call support, or log into it and try to find where you set "MULTICASTING ON" or RIP BOTH DIRECTIONS and version to 2M

GOOD LUCK everyone. I am quite confident this will solve your problems!

wanted to clarify one thing (besides my typos from the last post....lol)

- Even when you follow the above and get Home Sharing working..and are actively sharing...the "Shared" group in iTunes doesnt appear on the left panel again......at least for me. It remains hidden but all works fine (after you follow my above post and turn on multicast in your router). Maybe that's a different glitch or I somehow hid it??? Does let this confuse you thoug.

Always a joy navigating the maze that is iTunes. Not the most enjoyable user experience. Have 3 laptops and 2 utilize the home sharing with no issues. The 3rd will only work when connected directly to the router via ethernet cable. It will not work wirelessly. Tried everthing listed throughout the thread and nothing else worked. I always thought Apple software was simplified and user friendly....boy was I mistaken!

After reading every post on this forum, and trying everything suggested to no avail, we spoke to a tech who talked us through changing the security security settings on our router (Netgear).

The router was set to broadcast on both channels WPA-PSk & WPA2-PSK. However the computers (both on Windows Vista) were set to one of either. Hence, in iTunes world, they are not on the same wireless network. The tech advised us to switched to the single channgel WPA-PSK and then reconnect all devices that lose connection to our wireless network again. All good. Now can see the library for the first time in homesharing.

Only problem, one phone, HTC Desire doesn't like WPA-PSK which is probably why we changed it in first place.

However... can anyone help with this... I can only see a list of all songs. I can't look at it by album, artist, nor see any of the playlists, etc. Any clues?