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Level 2

210 points

iTunes causing constant freezes forcing reboot

I'm very frustrated lately with iTunes. I'm running version 10.1 but have been having a problem for the last several releases. I have about 56 gigs of music located on my iMac. I don't access any of it off an external drive. I'm finding that iTunes is randomly freezing which causes the whole computer to freeze as well. My mouse pointer still moves and sometimes the music will even keep playing, at least for a while, but everything else is unresponsive and clicking on any app causes the beach ball to start spinning. I can't force quit anything because the dock, the Apple menu and any utilities I have running are also frozen. The only recovery to to power down the machine. I've even left it frozen for an hour to see if it would eventually recover and it doesn't.

What's frustrating is that I can't figure out exactly what causes the freeze. Sometimes it happens with music playing and iTunes in the background. Other times it happens downloading apps or syncing my iPhone. It's to the point where anytime I use iTunes I have to close all my open applications and cross my fingers because chances are it will freeze at some point. I know some users are reporting freezes when they launch the app. This doesn't seem to be my problem. It launches fine and I'm able to use it but at some point if I keep it open, chances are it will freeze. I pretty much get in and get out and hope for the best.

Given that I have a large library and I don't want to loose all my album art, play counts, etc, I'm not sure what to do. I've done all the usual trouble shooting of deleting pref files, repairing disk permissions, etc but nothing has helped. At this point, I can't tell if something is corrupted or if there's a bug with iTunes itself. If it's a corruption, I'm not sure how to fix it without loosing anything (artwork, play counts, etc).

There seem to be a fair number of people reporting freeze problems but there doesn't seem to be a consistent cause or any real trouble shooting that has worked. I'm really at a loss. iTunes is great and I love listening to music but hard crashes are not good for my other applications and sooner or later it's going to cause corruption issues on the disk or with other applications. The problem seems to be getting worse too. It started off around the time I upgraded to Snow Leopard but was only happening occasionally. Now it happens constantly but again, only when iTunes is running.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

PS. If your suggestion is to reinstall my OS, thanks in advance but move along to the next post. That's not next in line as a trouble shooting step.

iMac 3.06 GHz 24", iPhone 3 GS, Mac OS X (10.6.5), 4 Gigs RAM

Posted on Nov 15, 2010 3:28 PM

56 replies

Dec 30, 2010 6:48 AM in response to firefighting_babe

Eric,

If all you want to do is make sure that system files are OK, you can just reinstall Snow Leopard on top of your current install and then apply the latest combo pack. I did that (in fact, I was surprised I could; I seem to recall that one could not install over a newer version of the OS) and it didn't help.

In my case, the logs clearly show I/O issues on the drives. Have you checked your logs? Have you tried duplicating the files I mentioned in my last post? If you off-loaded the contents of your hard disk to an external drive, did you make a bootable copy? If so, you may want to work from that for a day or so to see if the problem recurs.

I'll keep posting once I have my new drive installed and it's been running for a couple of days or so.

Happy New Year!

Daniel

Eric D. Author

Level 2

210 points

Dec 30, 2010 12:00 PM in response to Daniel Kiechle

Daniel,

Good tip about reinstalling the system software. Since my computer is already backed up, I think I'm just going to do a completely clean install. It won't take much additional time and I can still restore from my Time Machine backup later if I this doesn't prove anything.

As for my logs, I'm not an expert at reading them but in scanning through all the logs, I didn't see anything that caught my eye as an I/O error. Which log did you find had errors and what was the error? I can then search for something similar.

I was able to duplicate the iTunes library file. I backed it up several times and tried copying it again today without any issues. My backup is not bootable so I haven't been able to try the same image on another machine but my other Macs are configured similarly and don't experience the problem. However, that's not a real apples to apples comparison because one is an iMac and the other is a MacBook Pro.

I'll post an update after my clean install. Happy New Year!

El Deanio

Level 3

805 points

Jan 2, 2011 4:17 AM in response to El Deanio

El Deanio wrote:

Daniel Kiechle wrote:
Quick follow-up:

Can those who are having problems check what login-items they are running (under System Preferences, Accounts)? I have eliminated a number of them (not just by removing them from the list but also by deleting them from the disk so they don't get added in again when the system is rebooted), and so far, my system has been up and running with iTunes playing in the background without skipping a beat. I realize it's too early to say, but six hours without a hitch when it used to crash within twenty to thirty minutes at the most is at least a step in the right direction!

I removed items that are part of

- the Spyder3 color calibration software
- the Checkup system monitoring utility
- the RIM Blackberry synchronization software
- the Chronosync utility
- iTunes (the iTunes Helper thing)
- SIMBL

I'm not saying that any of these caused the problem; I am saying that by eliminating these items, my systems seems stable, so this is something those with problems may want to look into. None of the items I removed is needed for my purposes. For instance, the Spydersoftware was just a reminded to calibrate (I do this once every 6 weeks or so, usually before I get the reminder anyway). iTunes Helper is just a thing that launches iTunes when one plugs in a device (iPod, iPhone...), something I'd rather do myself anyway as I often plug in those devices just to charge them.

What's left in my list and does not seem to cause problems is the following:

- GrowlHelperApp
- PopChar
- DiskWarriorStarter
- DropBox
- LaunchNikon Message Center 2
- SophosUIServer (All Users)

I suggest that if you have iTunes freeze problems, you look into your login items. And yes, reboot after you've gotten rid of some of these and verify that they are truly gone when the system comes back up.

Hope this is useful to someone!

Daniel

Well after quite some time of no re-occurrence of the iTunes spinning beach ball jobby it happened again. This time I had no other apps open at all (at least none in the Dock). All I was doing was changing from 'List View' to 'Cover View' mode.

Reading both your posts, the only common app. that I share with you, Eric D, is iTunes Helper.

I have been having problems with my iPod Touch booting iPhoto when I plug it in and I was going to post to ask how I change this Default to either iTunes or nothing at all rather than iPhoto when I read your post saying that “iTunes Helper is just a thing that launches iTunes when one plugs in a device (iPod, iPhone...), something I'd rather do myself”.

So I used Spotlight to open iTunes Helper. The only thing I found was that iTunes Helper opened Photoshop instead of iTunes as I expected. I don’t know why. I tried again with the same result and it seems the iTunes Helper plist is involved.

See my screen shot. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11373233/Screen%20shot%202010-12-26%20at%2014.53.25.png

I have just moved these files to the Desktop

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11373233/Screen%20shot%202010-12-26%20at%2015.59.39.png -

to see if iTunes works better without them.

I have had no further problems with iTunes so I think I will wait another week or so then trash the .plist files on my desktop

Eric D. Author

Level 2

210 points

Jan 3, 2011 1:16 PM in response to Eric D.

I wanted to provide an update on my progress. After failing to figure out any other solution, I decided I needed to reinstall my OS to see if that fixed the problem. As I soon learned, there are many options when it comes to reinstalling the OS and here's what I found.

*Install 1:* Erase and zero out the hard drive, then restore from Time Machine backup

Result: iTunes froze as usual. I think this proved two things. First, it was not a problem with bad blocks on the hard drive as that would have been corrected by zeroing out the drive. Second, by restoring from backup, whatever problem existed was simply copied back onto the drive which points either towards a corrupted file or some kind of software incompatibility.

*Install 2:* Install Snow Leopard from DVD without erasing the hard drive.

Result: iTunes froze as usual. This process should have updated all the system software and replaced any corrupted system files but the problem still existed. That points to some file that is not a system file but could still be in the system folder or some other application incompatibility.

*Install 3:* Erase hard drive, install from Snow Leopard DVD and use Migration Assistant during install to restore files.

Result: iTunes froze as usual. This process restored my user account, apps, documents, music, photos, etc. and again something in one of those files must be causing the problem.

*Install 4:* Erase hard drive, install from Snow Leopard DVD, manually copy Music folder from backup drive.

Result: _iTunes works!_ At least in my limited testing. I was able to play music over New Years without iTunes freezing once. The system was completely vanilla except for my Music folder. This seems to prove that it's not a problem with my iTunes music files or library.

*Install 5:* Erase hard drive, install from Snow Leopard DVD, use Migration Assistant to restore user account, music, photos, etc but not applications, system settings or other files.

Result: _It appears iTunes works._ I've been playing music all day with no issues. I have not manually reinstalled any of my applications yet but did restore my user account which also restored certain pref panes, Safari extensions, and other preferences. Migration Assistant does not let you get very granular with what gets restored so a few more things than I expected got restored but not any of my apps. That points to some application potentially causing a problem with iTunes.

I'm going to continuing playing my iTunes non-stop to ensure it doesn't freeze then one by one, start reinstalling my apps to see what happens. Because this problem appears randomly, it could still be there and just hasn't shown up yet but in my testing, usually a freeze happens within about 30 minutes so I'm hopeful that it's gone at least for now. The puzzler is what app could be causing the problem because I thought I had trouble shoot everything I had running. It could be that some application installs some service I didn't notice that was the culprit.

Needless to say, I've chewed up a ton of time reinstalling the OS and my files trying to figure this out. Hopefully I'm getting close now.

Jan 3, 2011 2:26 PM in response to Daniel Kiechle

I only received my new drive today because I hadn't noticed that the place I ordered it from was closed one day at the end of December due to inventory. As a result, the drive only shipped on the 31st, and since there is no Saturday delivery, I got it today.

I formated it (normally, no zeroing) using Disk utility, then booted from the Snow Leopard installation disk and did a restore from Time Machine backup. I now have four drives in my Mac Pro: the new 1 TB server grade Seagate, a spare 1 TB Seagate on which I keep Aperture vaults and backups of referenced photo files, a 1.5 TB Seagate drive which is used for Time Machine, and the 1 TB Hitachi drive that used to be my boot drive.

First, restoring my roughly 560 gigs took only 1 hour and 55 minutes. The only thing non-standard I did was to replace my entire iTunes folder with the one from my MacBook Pro. The two are suppose to be identical, but given past experience, I didn't quite trust the one in my Time Machine backup. Right now, I'm back in business with the new drive, iTunes is playing, and so far so good. I'll keep running for a while.

Eric, I'm not a log specialist either, but what I did is show all logs in the console and then scroll through the entries until I reached the time the system had frozen. There I found I/O errors, and when I copied part of the error string and put it into the search box on the top right, the system came up with tons more. What I learned is that problems can be very much intermittent.

I'll post back in a few days or earlier if I run into problems.

Daniel

Jan 9, 2011 12:47 AM in response to Eric D.

After several days of running without a hitch, I am now ready to close this subject, at least as far as my own case is concerned. With the new drive, the system has been running flawlessly, and I've also added back the login actions I had initially removed. Clearly, in my case, the problem was bad blocks, and it happened to affect iTunes only because it needed to access files that could not be read completely.

The DIskWarrior daemon regularly gives a status of the hard disks. For the three Seagates in my Mac Pro, it shows (among others) a line that includes the following information:

Spare blocks for ATA device 'ST31500341AS' ... appear to still be available. (Total Available: 36)

For the Hitachi (the drive that had bad blocks and created the problem for me), the equivalent line reads:

Spare blocks for ATA device 'Hitachi HDS721010KLA330' ... appear to still be available. (Total Available: 5)

The available spare block count on the Hitachi went down after I reformatted the drive with the option to write zeros to every block. The lesson I learned from all this is that a normal formatting apparently does not do anything about bad blocks; this is why my first attempt to format the drive and restore it from a Time Machine backup did not produce any results).

Another lesson, perhaps, is to be a little less ready to jump to conclusions and blame Apple for shoddy testing. This is not a criticism aimed at anyone in particular; I am myself, at times, guilty of the same thing. Indeed, it is almost irresistible to say that iTunes has a problem, therefore it's Apple's fault. However, computers are complex beasts, and a problem that arises with one thing may well be caused by another.

Anyway, I'm up and running. I hope everyone else is, too, or soon gets there.

Daniel

Eric D. Author

Level 2

210 points

Jan 9, 2011 8:33 AM in response to Daniel Kiechle

Daniel,

Glad to hear your problem appears solved. I too have been running problem free since I did a fresh install of Snow Leopard from DVD without restoring my old applications. I've been using iTunes daily since and so far, haven't encountered any problems. I'm slowing installing my old apps back one by one in hopes of trying to figure out which one might has caused the conflict. In my case, I really don't believe it was the drive but some kind of software conflict. I'll post an update to this thread if I ever figure out which software was causing the issue.

I agree too that Apple does a pretty good job of testing their products. I have encountered issues in the past where their products were to blame but they've always managed to get the fixes out eventually. My biggest complaint, which I've raised in other threads, is that I don't understand why the Force Quit function isn't more reliable. For an application to lock up the whole system with no recourse but to power off your machine seems like a failure in design somewhere. iTunes is one of the few remaining Carbon apps so that might have something to do with it. I'm sure there are technical reasons why Force Quit isn't always an option but hopefully someday they'll figure out a way to always give the user a little control of misbehaving applications.

El Deanio

Level 3

805 points

Jan 12, 2011 2:32 PM in response to Eric D.

I agree. Time was when Force Quit would work nearly every time. Nowadays it seems that it hardly ever works at all.

MakiMac

Level 1

0 points

Jan 12, 2011 6:22 PM in response to El Deanio

Just curious - are either of you using MobileMe? I had similar problems that went away after a full system refresh, but returned a month later when I re-established MobileMe credentials. This was repeatable. I no longer use MobileMe, and removed the credentials from my account. I'm a happy camper again.

If you are interested, see my post here:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12919628#12919628

Maki...

Eric D. Author

Level 2

210 points

Jan 13, 2011 8:08 AM in response to MakiMac

Yes, I do use Mobile Me but have not found it to be an issue. This week I did discover that there was a process crashing on my machine called PubSubAgent. I found it when reading through my Console logs. Apparently it's a widely known problem that this process can continually crash and restart. Apparently, the process is responsible for updating the RSS feeds in both Mail and Safari. The fix was simple, trashing the ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist file. Now the process is no longer crashing. Apparently something gets corrupted which cases the issue. I have no idea if that had anything to do with my system freezes but it certainly wasn't helping anything.

MakiMac

Level 1

0 points

Jan 17, 2011 5:03 PM in response to Eric D.

This worked for me - feels solid too:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12947960#12947960

iTunes causing constant freezes forcing reboot