Q: When I attempt to preview a song on iTunes, it begins to play but stops after 5 seconds

Resolving the flushdns did not work for me either -- using XP

Just to let you all know ... I did all the suggestions and nothing worked.  Today, it just started to work. I don't have a clue why. It hadn't worked for almost 2 1/2 weeks.

OH GOOD GRIEF ... After working ALL AFTERNOON,  it's not working again.  THIS MAKES NO SENSE~ (Sorry for the shout, I'm frustrated about this whole thing).

Same problems.  It's intermittent.  Some songs stream the entire 90 seconds, others just 4 or 5 seconds.  Doesn't seem to be a pattern.  Very frustrating.  Obviously, flushing DNS didn't work, but I'm desperate, so I tried it.  Still waiting on a resolution from Apple.

You can add my name to the list of people also experiencing this problem!  It would be nice if Apple acknowledged it and fixed it.

Add me too. I've had the problem for 2 or 3 weeks. DNS flush didn't so anything.

Very frustrated that the update to 10.6.3 didn't fix this issue either!

Upgrade and DNS flush did not help me either.

Just echoing everyone else - just started to happen after the upgrade to 10.6.3.   Other forums suggest its the download speed using wireless.   I disconnected wireless, plugged directly into cable - the sample played for a few seconds longer then pause with the 'rebuffering' message.  Paused = hung.   What is also irritating is that while this 'rebuffering' message is stopping the sampling,  the iTunes main screen is still flashing advertisements at me for new albums, etc. - that doesn't seem to be affected - only sampling of songs.   I'm with others - if I can't sample a song for more than 10 seconds I'm not going to buy it.

Same issue, tried the recommended fix on the forums - to no avail.  Someone mentioned it earlier, DNS doesn't seem to be the problem - if DNS was a problem, the song shouldn't even queue up at all.  Problem started with the recent upgrade to Itunes.  Got so fed up, I went over to Amazon to check out their MP3s - the album I couldn't listen to on Itunes was on sale at Amazon ($9.99 vs $6.99).  The lower cost was just icing on the cake after being able to actually PREVIEW the music at Amazon's site! 

The MP3s download right from Amazon's site and the downloader allows you to push them to Itunes so everything is in one place, couldn't have been easier.  I'll come back to the Itunes store when this bug is fixed.

did it for XP. Doesnt work

I'm also having this problem.  Tried disabling all norton protections, reinstalling ALL apple components according to Apple's tech note, rebooting and still have the problem.

Sorry, didn't work for me.  Problem started weeks ago..    I uninstalled and then reinstalled the latest version of itunes and the problem was fixed.. but the fix was only a coincidence.  With no changes by me, the previews stopped working properly again sometime in the last week. I was out of town..  my PC was turned off in that time.. when I got back and turned it back on.. itunes preview wasn't working.  No changes at all at my end, no updates of any software, no anything.  The previews are not consistent.. some will play for only 7 seconds, some for 15.. usually they are 4-7 seconds. Frustrating that this problem is continuing for so long.  More frustrating that Apple is not acknowleding that the issue is on their side. 

I tried a possible solution that was suggested on another similar thread, and it worked. Perhaps a coincidence, but immediately before it did not work, and immediately after, it did. I simply turned the Genius feature on in i-Tunes. Could it be this simple? I can now preview a song for the full preview. Worth a try anyway!

Turning on Genius seems to have solved this problem for me.