Smart Playlist - Ratings fields are blank and crashing iTunes

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Level 3

783 points

Smart Playlist - Ratings fields are blank and crashing iTunes

My iTunes has recently developed this problem where if I open a Smart Playlist and select "Ratings", the Ratings field is completely white. There are no stars or greyed out stars. If I try to click in that field, it crashes iTunes. Upon reopening iTunes, it runs a "Checking iTunes Library..." function but it still doesn't work correctly. This is happening for existing and newly created Smart Playlist.

All song rating appear normally within the normal browsing window.

Has anyone seen this? Anyone know of a fix?

Thanks

Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jun 7, 2011 1:10 PM

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Answer 1

alternapop Author

Level 3

783 points

Jun 10, 2011 10:56 PM in response to alternapop

bump

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Answer 2

alternapop Author

Level 3

783 points

Jun 12, 2011 4:53 PM in response to alternapop

After troubleshooting this by throwing away iTunes preferences, restoring previous iTunes libraries from Time Machine, reinstalling 10.6.7 Combo and iTunes, reimaging the computer from scratch, the root of the cause finally appeared.

After reimaging the computer and running disk diagnostics, the hard disk was failing at times. I then determined that the hard drive had to be replaced but I wasn't sure if this would fix my iTunes smart playlist ratings problem.

I bought a new 500 gb drive to replace the original 120 gb drive, which was 4.5 years old.

After restoring from Time Machine and booting up into my main account, my iTunes smart playlist finally started working. I'm guessing that because I have an enormous iTunes library, something about pulling the data was straining the computer. That doesn't seem right though because creating/editing a smart playlist should just be a regular window without any labor intensive hd actions until you close it.

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