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

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.

People who report succes after restoring their iDevice, myself included (five devices, all hanging for different reasons) are reporting the major required element:  when the upgrade gets to the point where it asks you if you want to RESTORE, your answer should be YES, even though it seems counterintuitive. The restore will jot delete everything (even though it says it will) IF you remembered to do a backup prior to upgrading.

Yep,  deleting the Voice Memos from my iPhone 4 w/ newly upgraded ios 5.0 allowed the iTunes USB sync to complete quickly and without a hitch.

Thanks!

This is not working for me. I did some changes to my aperture library and now all of a sudden its hanging on that last step (of pictures) ... What to do?!?!?!?!?!

I've also tried all solutions ... It seemed to start not working once I updated my aperture library.

It's stuck on "genius results." .... ???

Update >>> the problem is definitely something regarding aperture. I synced my ipad without aperture checked and it worked perfectly. Then I checked aperture and it got stuck on step 7 again. This is sooo frustrating.

I had two issues that I was able to resolve this morning. Now sync goes FAST! Before this I was stuck at one of the two errors below:

"Waiting for items to copy"- On the music tab I had to check to "include voice memos" in the sync.

"waiting for changes to be applied" - I had to delete my "ipod photo cache folder" which was in the folder of photos I was syncing.

It seems different things help different situations or devices.  But nothing that would apply to my situation, that has worked for others, has helped.  I am still stuck on Syncing Artwork - waiting for items to copy.  I tried one suggestion, to delete the Photo Cache.  Then, before I tried to sync, I spent hours adding new artwork to my albums that previously had artwork, but iTunes was nice enough to delete without warning.

Once I completed this task, I did the sync, left if overnight to complete and came back to my PC this morning and it was STILL on Syncing Artwork - waiting for items to copy.

I don't know what else to try.  Suggestions from anyone would be appreciated.  My device is an iPod Touch, no Genius running (never have), no voice memos, no aperture (not even sure what that is).  While I have about 8000 songs in my iTunes library, I have less than 2000 songs loaded on this specific device.  I also have about 700 pictures loaded).

And of course I have apps that I have downloaded from iTunes.  Some paid, some free.

iOS5 is loaded.  Is there anyway to start all over again fresh?  The only thing, at this point, that I don't want to lose are my apps.  Data associated with any of the apps has already been lost though.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help.

I am in the process of a restore via the iTunes restore option. Hoping this helps. I know a restore can be a pain sometimes, but this not finishing the sync bull sh*t is ******* me off!

Update >>> the problem is definitely something regarding aperture.

It's funny you mention that, because if I had to pinpoint the very last thing I did prior to this problem (seemingly occurring out of nowhere after days and days since iTunes / iOS / Lion updates), it would be making some very minor changes in my Aperture library. I think I grouped some photos together, no major edits or imports.

So even though this hangs on my iPhone, it still seems to be syncing everything just fine. It's just that I have to either quit iTunes or eject the phone to get it stop.

iPad2 is a-ok. Knock on wood...

I got it to work (fingers crossed) by doing a restore to my iphone. Took 3 hours but it IS syncing now.

reminders still won't sync to icloud, but that's minor compared to the rest!

Did you just restore to your last backup?

DId you lose any app data, settings, etc.?

Thanks-

restored from most recent backup and no, nothing was lost.

My restore finished in a half hour. ALL DATA was restored, nothing lost, and my iPhone 4 will finally SYNC!!! YAY! Restore people. You don't lose anything and it fixes the problem.

WOW- Unexpected Success after 7 days!!! (Got my phone in mail last Friday, 10/14).

A lot of info here and I had tried almost all of it!    (maybe 12 hours invested! )

But I skipped over voice memo CHECK BOX as I never had used that, I thought.  And messages just before HANG up never had a clue of voice memo issues! yet did point to other odd suspects. (things seeming to sync that SHOULDNT sync)

My Symptoms-  w/ 64 gb phone, xp pro, itunes 10.5.0.142, about 35 GB data, apps, photos, music, pod, etc.

1.could never finish a sync.  (many different stop comments on top line (artwork, genius, always waiting to copy)

     BUT, didn't notice any songs, podcasts, books, apps NOT syncing.  itunes just seemed confused, doing some of the same genius copying many times (once at the end of every single sync- just before hanging)

2. Could never sync via wifi. 

3. Seemed like phone was stuck WANTING to wifi sync even if itunes wifi sync was UNchecked, even afer reboots, phone restarts & iphone restores

4. TRIED: You could reboot computer, restart iphone, RESORE iphone (with ANY BACKUP since day 1) all you wanted and all 3 of these stay the same.   Even with DESELECTING ALL TABS IN ITUNES (basically empyting iphone, THEN backing up & THEN restoring.)  Still same 3 issues above!!!!!  

5. Weird Observations:   Near the end of every sync, I would often see certain sync items, Like an audiobook from audible syncing EVEN WITH MUSIC & AUDIOBOOKS UNCHECKED in itunes.  Then the hang.  This led me to suspect a challenging data base corruption root cause.

Had high hopes for KKfromYB list but it didn't work for me. And no way to follow one instruction on list: to disable "sync via wifi" IN iphone 4s- (iphone 4s kept saying it will sync when computer is next available, which it IS available always, and it had sync now greyed out, and no other choices in iphone, even right after my restore, backup, & usb sync).  I tried checking & unchecking box wifi sync box in itunes to NO EFFECT, ever.

I figured my itunes library- many years old, many hard drive transfers, was corrupted and would be very hard to ever find & fix the problems,

then, POOF.  

SELECTING "SYNC VOICE MEMOS" (An app which i forgot i ever had used!! over a year ago!) & then sync and it FINISHED QUICKLY!!!

Probably all these restores (8?) for nothing.

Shouldn't have spent so much time on this!!!   iphone working great! amazing speed & SIRI amazing, etc. 

    Just couldn't make itunes happy (it couldn't finish any syncs- but did sync what I asked) ,and no wifi sync.

Thanks for all the comments.

Surely this will get fixed soon for all or most of us in upcoming itunes & iphone software updates.

I was shocked that SELECTING "SYNC VOICE MEMOS" worked for me.  For now.