Q: Itunes 10 homesharing not working

I was having a heck of a time deleting itunes. Using Task Manager shut down the Apple Mobiel and the other Itunes looking processes. Then I could delete Bonjour and Itunes and Apple Mobile Device Support using Add or Remove Programs at Control Panel.

imac and ipad, no firewall, IPv6 auto, no sign of home share. enable it, disappears when I click done.  Router reset, both apples reset, no help.  no problem linking two pcs through router on home network.

apple just makes everything a chore.

Help! Home sharing won't work at all across my devices.

My devices:

- Apple tv 2 (5.0.2)

- Late 2007 iMac 24" (Which is running Mac OSX 10.8)

- and My iPhone 3gs (with ios 6.0.1)

I was able to airplay and share fine. But now nothing. I'm wondering if it could be my router. I have a netgear WNR2000 wireless router. All devices are online and working but there's just no communication b/w them. I cannot find my apple tv or my imac on my iphone and vice versa.

Please HELP!!!

Seems recent update changed something relating to user permissions.  If you are running iTunes on a WIndows 7 PC, run iTunes as an Administrator.  You can do so from a Admin account / Admin permission or you can right click on iTunes and select "run as administrator" within your account.  In either case, it isn't the firewall, router, settings, re-install of apps, etc.  Serious missteps by corporate and the Apple team are causing client loss of faith.  If they don't correct course, many will be taking their money elsewhere.  The "eco-system" has been the true advantage for Apple... not any longer.  And, these missteps will cause an Exodus.

Here's an interesting find... I also have been struggling with my home sharing suddenly not working.  My PC was hardwired to my Verizon FiOS router and everything else in the house uses wifi.  So like everyone, it was working one day and then never again.  I struggled trying to figure this out for weeks.  All the other iTunes computers and other devices (iphones, ipad, appleTV) could see each other and share fine.  But my main PC, the one with all my music and photos, etc could not see or be seen. 

At one point of desperation I decided to shell out the money to upgrade from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7.  I figured a fresh start with a fresh install would surely do the trick... NOPE.

So then I decided the ONLY thing different between the devices working and not working was the fact that my PC was hardwired and not wifi.  As absurd as this sounds, I disconnected from the router which sits right next to the PC and found an old USB wifi adapter (my pc doesn't have built in wifi for some reason).  I popped in the USB wifi and once the hardware installed the home sharing started working.  So in my opinion the issue lies within the router, right?  It makes no sense to me but it's worked since. 

Today I just realized that my carbonite is not backing up properly and shows a bunch of files "pending backup".... Guess what the fix for that is... you guessed it.  Hooking the ethernet back into the router.  So now it's either back up my files or have home sharing.  FML

Thanks!

Well iTunes 11 is behaving exactly as 10 was for me. Homesharing works for a short time when first enabled then after a few minutes just stops

After spending a week reading these message boards this was the fix. I too have a Netgear router. Thank you so much for your post !!

I experience similar behavior with a FIOS router - rebooting the router helps for a short time.

Also just updated to iTunes 11 on my main Windows7 desktop PC with my main iTunes library.  No change with Home Share problem to both my iPhone5 and iPad3 with iOS6.01.  My shared iTunes never appears, not even briefly.  Works fine to my other networked PCs, just not my iPhone or iPad.  Crazy.  Frustrating. 

Just wanted to let folks know that in my mixed environment (iPads, iPhones, PC's - vista 64 / win7 64 / win8 64, , Apple TV and mac's) that my issue was really with my PC's.  As someone suggested that if your shared library worked prior to iTunes 11, the issue was with the preferences file in your user/App Data folder find the iTunesPref.xml and just remove it.  I did nothing else, started Itunes  and it rebuilt a new iTunesPref.xml on its own and all of my devices showed instantly (the ones that were connected to the home share).  Just thought I'd share that info.

I **think** I may have got mine working.

I re-visited the Windows Firewall settings and noticed that I had three entries for the "Bonjour Service". One was enabled for Home/Work (Private) but the other two were not. I turned the two that were off on and lo-and behold my shared library has been visible on both iPad and iPod for an hour or so which is way longer than previously where it disappeared after a few minutes.

Perhaps some of you struggling could check this out and see if it makes any difference for you?

Cheers

Hello Everyone I after much testing the main issue was after rebooting my wireless router everything worked for a while for various times. This issue started after upgrading to a router with N capabilities. Now the key to solving the issue was after disabling all firewalls nothing worked but then I plugged the apple tv into the wired connection and yes it worked ok all the time. Switched the router back to the old g and everything worked on wifi, yes it was definately my new router.

After troubleshooting for days by fooling around with various settings I found that once you enable n for higher data rates the problem presented itself. The only help was to turn off aggregation yes once I did that I did not even have to reboot my router. Seems bonjour does not like what aggregation does . This feature is found on draft 802.11n. Here is the wiki for it as this better explains for none technical persons

Frame aggregation is a feature of the IEEE 802.11e and 802.11n wireless LAN standards that increases throughput by sending two or more data frames in a single transmission.

Every frame transmitted by an 802.11 device has a significant amount of overhead, including radio level headers, Media Access Control (MAC) frame fields, interframe spacing, and acknowledgment of transmitted frames. At the highest data rates, this overhead can consume more bandwidth than the payload data frame.^[1] To address this issue, the draft 802.11n standard defines two types of frame aggregation: MAC Service Data Unit (MSDU) aggregation and MAC Protocol Data Unit (MPDU) aggregation. Both types group several data frames into one large frame. Because management information needs to be specified only once per frame, the ratio of payload data to the total volume of data is higher, allowing higher throughput.

Simply turning this feature off and without even a reboot of the router my apple tv now connects to the central library over wifi, remote works on all devices and yes home sharing now works greats with all three iPads including 1 third generation on ios6, airplay works, two iphone 4s thumbs up with remote, airplay and sharing and this has been working ok now for hours. Hope this helps everyone but keep in mind all apple devices must be on the same subnet so you can have multiple APs but they must be on the same ip address range and no routing between them. If you want different subnets then that is a whole different topic

Interesting theory.  I checked my Windows7 Firewall settings and have two entries for "Bonjour Service".  Both are enabled for "Private/Home Network".  Still can't see my shared iTunes libraries on iPhone or iPad. 

I deleted the pref file and it worked for me... so far so good! Thanks!