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How to fix huge iTunes memory leak in 64-bit Windows 7?

iTunes likes to allocate as much as 1.6GB of memory on my dual-quad XEON 8GB 64-Bit Windows computer and then becomes unresponsive.


This can happen several times a day and has been going on for as long as I can remember. No other software that I use does this - only Apple's iTunes. Each version I have installed of iTunes appears to have this same memory leak. Currently I am running version 10.7.0.21.


I love iTunes when it works. But having to constantly kill and relaunch the app throughout the day is bringing me down.


Searching for a fix for this on the internet just surfaces more and more complaints about this problem - but without a solution.


Having written shrinkwrapped software for end users as well as for large corporations and governments for more than 25 years I know a thing or two about software. A leak like this should take no more than a day or two to locate using modern software tools and double that to fix it. So why with each new version of iTunes does this problem persist? iTunes for Windows is the flagship software product Apple makes for non-Mac users - yet they continue to pass up each opportunity they have had over the years with each new release to fix this issue. Why is this?


Either the software engineers are not that good or they have been told NOT to spend time on this issue. I personally believe that the engineers at Apple are very good, and therefore am left thinking that the latter is more likely the case. Maybe this is to coax people to purchase a Mac so that they can finally run iTunes without these egregious memory leaks. I would like to offer another issue to consider.


Just as Amazon sold Kindles and Google sold Nexus tablets at low cost - not counting on margin for profit - but instead they wanted to saturate the marketplace with tools for making future purchases of content almost trivial to do with their devices. Apple also counts on this model with their pricer hardware - but they also have iTunes. Instead of trying to get people to switch to a MAC by continuing to avoid fixing this glaring issue in iTunes for Windows I would like to suggest that by allowing their engineers to address this issue that Apple will help keep Windows users from jumping ship to another music app. The profit to be made by keeping those Windows users happy and wedded to the iTunes store is obvious.


By continuing to keep this leak in iTunes for Windows all it does is lower my esteem for the company and start to make me wonder if the software is just as buggy on Macs.

iTunes-OTHER, Windows 7, 64-Bit 8GB Ram dual quad core Xeon

Posted on Nov 29, 2012 7:00 AM

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28 replies

Sep 25, 2015 4:33 AM in response to Vegan Advocate

VegAdv


You have 2x foot print over my media but I do have 100s of movies and stream to upto 10 devices.


I run 16 gb and an SSD drive .. all my media is saved to separate NAS and thus a stream routes from the requesting device to iTunes on PC then pulls media from NAS and sends back to requesting device.


Adding an SSD drive for me was a night and day experience in performance across the board. I replaced my old HD with Samsung 850 pro. The cloning process was incredibly easy. I was skeptical that there would be issue post clone but not single issue. As one indicator my previous boot time was 10 minutes .. after the SSD 30 seconds. I mention this as just a general metric on the disk I/O on the PC hosting the iTunes.

Nov 3, 2015 3:49 AM in response to Vegan Advocate

1.2 GB memory for no reason, noticed first at 400/ 500 M and then just grows by itself even when machine is idle.


Win 8.1 x 64 Pro.


I had just upped to iTunes 12.3.0.4 / 12.3.1 for iOS 9 Update. It suggested to install the latest iCloud setup.. which I did, big mistake and then Started happening after.


I am wondering if we should uninstall iCloud.exe and reinstall the last older version that was not leaking on my PC.


PS: I dont even have any music in my library. So I wonder what the **** its doing bloating up to 1.2 G

Nov 3, 2015 4:06 AM in response to crashnburn_in

iCloud has a memory leak and has for past 2 versions.


What I do is open task bar and end task on icloudservices.exe. This is practically a daily routine.


Yes its hard to grasp that apple would fail to catch this in testing and further fail to fix given the feedback in this forum and time that has elapsed.


Its easy to manually start the app when needed. I have seen no negative consequences in terms of corruption using this routine.

Aug 8, 2016 7:08 AM in response to lottytx

Following updates to W10 last week (the major upgrade) and round of itunes and icloud updates i am for first time in 2 years seeming stable memory. In fact at much lower level


after 4 days of uptime the package of "iCloud" services


Drive 2.4MB

Photo Library 2.8MB

Photo Stream 3.1MB

Photo Stream Download 2.8MB

Services 21.3 MB ..


Cumulatively these are stable at less than 40MB .. whereas prior to this round of updates would peg out 1.8GB and start causing trouble requiring a manual end task .. i have not hand to do that in several weeks which is a positive surprise (but how it should have been all along)

Aug 8, 2016 10:36 AM in response to lottytx

I use the 64-bit version of iTunes and strongly recommend everyone use it. The memory management of x64 is much better.


As I scroll around in my music I see memory use rise as more artwork is loaded into memory. This can be misinterpreted as a memory leak. iTunes is simply only loading a few albums when it starts and it dynamically loads as it goes.


If I scroll around a lot the memory load rises until the whole library is loaded. Then the memory is stagnant.


My library uses maybe 1.2GB of memory max. if you are that short of memory, it's time to upgrade.

How to fix huge iTunes memory leak in 64-bit Windows 7?

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