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iTunes 10.5.1 Home Sharing not working (Windows 7 64 Bit)

Looks like this is being reported by a fair few people on the forums - so just wanted to add my voice. Since iTunes 10.5 (same in iTunes 10.5.1) on Windows 7 64 Bit home sharing has stopped working. I have all firewalls disabled on my Windows machine, have tried all the normal suggestions of signing out and back into home sharing on all devices etc. iTunes Windows library does not show to other devices on the network including iPad, iPhone and Apple TV (all running latest firmware as of 19/11/2011). Not looking for any responses here from the community, as the problem clearly lies with iTunes on Windows. Apple please fix!


In the meantime the only way I can use my Apple TV is to sync purchases down to the iPad and then Airplay them to the Apple TV. Very annoying. Maybe time to look for an alternative for movie and TV downloads as Apple TV is pointless without it being able to connect to my Windows iTunes library and downloads..

AppleTV 2, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Nov 19, 2011 10:47 AM

Reply
194 replies

Oct 25, 2013 6:09 AM in response to llngoc

I've had Apple TV for about a month. Had some problems connecting, here and there at first. Then I upgraded my wireless router this week, and I couldn't connect my iTunes library, via Home Sharing, to ATV or my iPhone remote app. (Although it possibly could had been the recent updates to both ATV and iTunes, who knows.) But after spending a few days trying to figure this out I doscovered Ilngoc's repair, and it worked perfectly! I'm going to post again so anyone else having this issue can hopefully find it easier......




llngoc wrote:


It is not IPv6 from your ISP. It is IPv6 on your PC which is running iTune for Home Share which is the problem. I had the exact same problem. I reinstalled iTune and it worked for 5-10 minutes and failed. But after I have disabled IPv6 on my PC's network controller, everything started working perfectly since then without a hitch. (See attached image for where IPv6 is disabled on the PC)


User uploaded file

Oct 31, 2013 12:53 PM in response to AJH205

Well, after almost a year of struggling with this nonsense, I was finally able to SOLVE this issue. The IPv6 did not work for me because I made that change long ago. I had network teaming enabled on my two network adapters on my PC (allows two adapters to act as one) and all I did was disable the teaming and now Home Sharing is working. Now keep in mind that it all worked fine with IPv6 enabled and Teaming enabled and all that. One day just poof... it stopped working.


So to summarize it all for Win 7 64bit how it started working for me again -

  1. Make sure firewall is open for bonjour ports
  2. IPv6 disabled on your network adapter(s) (Wired/Wireless) whatever you are using
  3. Teaming disabled


I hope this helps someone.

Jan 26, 2014 6:06 AM in response to AWadd

I struggled a long time with this as well. It would work some times but mostly did not work at all.


I tried turning on/off home sharing in iTunes and on my iOS devices, disabled/re-enabled "share my library on my local network" in iTunes, closed/reopen iTunes with each change, power off/on my iOS devices, reboot my pc several times, etc. None of these steps helped.


I then tried forwarding TPC ports (123 & 3689) and UDP ports (123 & 5353) in my routers firewall settings, still no-go.


Then I saw this post and tried turning off IPV6, and while at first I had no internet connection at all--even with leaving IPV4 checked, I had to re-enable IPV6 to establish an internet connection again. Then once I disabled IPV6 once more, I remained connected to the internet.


Sadly this didn't seem to fix my home sharing woes entirely, so I tried disabling "share my library on my local network" under preferences in iTunes and my home sharing immediately showed up on my iPad and is still working perfectly after rebooting.


Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you AWadd!!! :)

Apr 25, 2014 10:15 AM in response to smellystar

After a year of ATV working flawlessing, it suddenly couldn't find my PC. I spent a day working on rebooting/reconnecting everything, but it was dissabling IPv6 that immediately solved the problem. After all I had tried I was extremely skeptical, but it worked like a charm. Many thanks for posting the fix. (All I have left to check is to see if Airdrop still works, but everything else works great.)

May 9, 2014 1:43 PM in response to AshAnRkey

I finally figured out the real problem, not ipv6-tried that and everthing else. I tried installing itunes on a different user name in windows 7, to find out an error occurred. Today I discovered that the Bonjour service was not showing up in my firewall exceptions, so I searched for it but could not find it. It showed up in add/remove programs but the same error occurred as before. Only the folders of bonjour existed, I guess since Itunes didn't remove it on uninstall. SO I uninstalled the Bonjour from programs, then uninstalled itunes. Then reinstalled itunes. This time itunes installer reinstalled it as it had not before. I looked and it was in my firewall exception list, not causing an error. I put ipv6 back on and my shared library is NOW NOT DISAPPEARING after a few minutes!! The real problem is that your comp may show bonjour working, it's not , corrupted or missing. Hope this helps!!

Jun 15, 2014 5:56 PM in response to AJH205

I have a low-power media server running Windows 7 64Bit & iTunes with hone sharing turned on. Like so many others here, I could not get it to work reliably – devices did not see the iTunes library. For me the IPv6 fix was not enough, but I did finally get it working...


For whatever reason Windows Firewall defaults to blocking Bonjour Services on the Private (Home/Work) Network. Oddly it seems to open it up for Public Networks by default. Seems a bit backwards to me...


So to get things working, I had to go to “Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall.” Find the entries for “Bonjour Services” and check the boxes under Home/Work (Private) Network.


These two server fixes – IPv6 & Firewall - finally allowed iTunes access from other devices on my LAN.

iTunes 10.5.1 Home Sharing not working (Windows 7 64 Bit)

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