iTunes stuck on last stage of sync, "Waiting for items to copy", NEVER COMPLETES??

Thanks, that worked for me.

When I've already lost hope.

🙂

I finally got past this issue.... After having no success doing anything else including the recent solution posted concerning deleting all voice memos. I did that and it made no difference in my case.

Earlier I had posted that I had turned off Genius and that too made no difference. I never bothered to turn Genius back on because I figured I didn't really use it on my iPhone... hence I don't really need it. So I kept it off.

Anyway, as I stated, I had tried just about everything else and I was not going to go through the process of removing all the media off my iPhone and re-installing it (it took several days just to get all my photos synced back to my iPhone after installing iOS 5, I don't want to go through that again). Since I didn't have much to lose now, I decided to try turning Genius back on and see if that made a difference.

BINGO!... Once I did, my next sync was just like the good ole days. I didn't have to wait an hour or more for "waiting for items to be copied" or "waiting for changes to be applied" - it did it all in just a few minutes.

I turned on wireless syncing and that works too.

Of course, I don't know if this will work for everyone, but for me it was a matter of turning Genius off and on again. I only wish I tried turning it back on sooner.

I turned it on and got nothing...turned it back off...got nothing. UGH

I'm curious...does anyone that has the problem happen to be runing on Windows 7? If so, do you have your itunes library on a external hard drive/portable hard drive? My itunes runs of my 1TB external hard drive. I was curious if running off of that and not the computer itself was the problem but I don't wanna take the time to move everything unless anyone else is having the problem and running it from a hardrive like me.

****!

IT FINALLY WORKED DELETED THE 2 VOICE MEMOS I HAD AND SYNED FINALLY WORKED AND COMPLETED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THANK U GUYS!

Same for me, deleting some newly added voice memos solved it for me. I have left an old voice memo that had already sync'd; this old one doesn't seem to cause a problem. Perhaps it is new ones added since the iOS and iTunes upgrade.

Reply to Kaseycuyler - I am running Windows XP and my iTunes library is on an external/portable hard drive as well. Nothing I have tried (with all these suggestions) has helped. It just hangs at Syncing Artwork - Waiting for items to copy. My device is an iPod Touch. I've also tried this on a few of my home PC's and my work PC.

I had many photos loaded on my device. I've removed them and trying syncing a folder at a time. But the ridiculously stupid iTunes software has now corrupted many of the pictures where they are no longer viewable, either on the iPod Touch or in Windows. They ruined them and there is no way to recover them. I can't believe the software could or would even do that. I've even lost my Artwork to more than 3/4 of my albums/songs (which were about 8000 songs).

I am very disappointed with the lack of response from Apple on this issue. Especially when all the hype is out about iOS 5, iPhone 4S, etc. I was about to purchase the new iPhone 4S, one for my daughter, one for me. But I'm not now. I also wanted to update my iPad 2 and many other iPods in the family, but again, I am worried about what will happen with these devices.

I think you might have part of the issue identified in album artwork. I have MUCH less music (200 songs) and use a Macbook to sync. The first time it hung up was with a message that it was waiting for artwork. Since then, the message is waiting to copy, but there is no doupt that my initial pause was with artwork.

BTW, I deleted (from my iPad) all my music, all videos, all pictures, all TV shows, all podcasts, etc.... Sync still stopped at the very end with a message that it was waiting for items to copy.

Still... 😟

After updating 3 iDevices in my family, and two for different neighbors, I will expand on the formula that seems to have worked for me. Every single iDevice I have upgraded has encountered one of three different 'hangs'. Note: I do not use Genius, nor have I ever had voice memos, so those remedies were not relvant to me.

- Update only ONE iDevice at a time, turning OFF all other iDevices.

- Make sure to update iTuunes.

- Plug in iDevice via USB, but click out of the offer to upgrade.

- Transfer purchases and then do a backup

- Now select upgrade and follow along.

- If and when you get to the hang', click out of the progress bar to end the sync

- Now 'eject' your device, unplug it and turn it off.

- Reboot your computer and restart iTunes.

- Turn on your iDevice and Look in your device 'settings' to see if in fact you now have ios5. If so, disable iCloud and disable "sync over wifi"

- Reattach your iDevice, and go right to Info and Summary - choose "Backup to computer" and choose "Sync to the computer"

- Now sync. Hopefully, it will go off without a hitch now.

- IF the sync is successful now, you can enable iCloud and your preference for syncing

- Eject and Disconnect device from computer, and enable iCloud and your preference for syncing

GOOD LUCK - all I can say is, these steps have worked for me

Had the same problem with iPad2 on Win 7 64bit, my library was on an internal hdd. Restoring the iPad solved the issue for me.

Thanks...frigging awesome.

I initially had only deleted voice memos from my itunes library and figured they would be deleted from my Ipod Touch automatically, when I synced

Lo and behold, I checked the Voice Memos app on the Ipod and they were still there.

Deleted them and bang, everything synced just fine.

Thanks a ton.

Like many others I tried every process identified in this thread. I ended up switching the setting for syncing ringtones from all ringtones to selected ringtones. Once I did that, presto! the sync completed in record time.

Trust me anyone that tried everything except restoring. I thought i'd never solve the problem but I finally did. Just connect to the computer and do a restore. It will restore it to factory with iOS 5 installed still. Just go through the setup and restore from backup. I did all that and after it finished putting everything on it WORKED yay. I just restarted the computer and iPhone and after that wifi sync worked as well and it completed a sync. The restore didn't make me lose any of my settings either so just try it. =D

OK - I have finally fixed the issue I had wth mine. For me, it was the Album Artwork that was the fly in the ointment. I had to delete the iTunes Artwork Cache (Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/Cache) and the sync went perfectly. I didn't delete the Chache folder itself, just everything inside it. You'll probably find a number of folders in there with obscure names, and lots of files deep inside them - Just trash them all. If you're going to try this and are worried you'll lose your album art, you shouldn't do - It's just a cache and itunes rebuilds it next time you launch the app. I set iTunes up in Coverflow view to force it to generate the chache files and when I went back to the folder it was full again. That said, in all these things, backups are handy to have, so I suggest you make a duplicate of the folder to an external drive before finally hitting "Empty Trash" - You never know!

Whatever it was in the old folder (something corrupt, perhaps), iTunes couldn't sync it - I'm glad to be rid of it after this nightmare. The worst thing about this is that Apple have been of no use at all on it; numerous people are posting on here with the issue and the comapny's silence is deafening. It's not just some silly little bug, it's a total disconnect in the cornerstone of the whole concept of having your media synced, and it's about time someone pulled their finger out in Infinite Loop and started to show an interest. I'm fortunate, I've been using Macs for around 18 years now, so I am used to this sort of thing, but if someone just got an iPhone and really has no experience of messing around with obscure files/folders etc. on their computers how are they ever going to fix it? Not good enough at all. It's an issue that should have been caught in the testing phase (it had been reported), but clearly wasn't.

Hoping that if you, like me, had tried everything everyone else suggested (restores, voice note/photo/app removal) and were still in a hole, this might fix it for you. As is obvious from the hundreds of postings on here, different things are working for different people, so I can't promise anything, but it's worth a try, especially compared to the drudgery of the restore process.

Good luck peeps!

Unfortunately, that hasn't worked for a lot of people (including me). The problem seems to be caused by different things for different users, so nailing it is tough. For me it was the Album Artwork Cache (who knew?!) - I'm just glad I can stop wasting time with it now and get on with using the phone.....

My success was short lived... Unfortunately. After two successful syncs without the lingering "waiting..." hanging, it is back to doing it again now. Sigh. I guess I will try turning off Genius, syncing, and turning it back again... I had already deleted all my voice memos, no more to delete.