iTunes 11.1 freezing constantly.

I'm having the same exact problem as well with iTunes 11.1.1. I haven't done any troubleshooting yet, but my crashes/freezes at some point throughout the day. It could be when connecting to one of my Apple TVs, iPads, or iPhones. I generally notice the freezing/crashing the morning, after leaving iTunes up and running overnight. My guess is that it's some sort of syncing issue, though I can stream and watch an entire movie from my Mac to to my AppleTV, with no problem.

Tim, if I may ask? Assuming your profile is accurate -- MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5); how much RAM do you have installed?

I'm sure you are a power user as editing video is way over my head; I just can't help but wonder, however, how much does your multitasking push the envelope (of RAM usage). Do you have a display of any sort that you use to monitor your Free Memory?

Regards

p.s. I see that Jeff's profile (below) indicates 8GB RAM in a 27" iMac (as a reference point for my curiosity).

I keep climbing up this thread past Lunarius' Oct 3rd post who has - I believe:

iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

No mention of RAM

TexiNick on Oct 4th: Mac OS X (10.7.4) who lists a boatload of products but No mention of RAM

on Oct 1: Tim Ryan

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

No mention of RAM

Rab & Vent claim fixes but no products/RAM listed in their profiles or mentioned within October portion of this thread.

So, if you good people see where I'm going with this... & that is, why do over 90% never mention RAM? Props to Jeff P who lists 8GB RAM.

Traditionally, historically, RAM usage is a critical factor when multitasking especially with the latest OS (except texinick w/Lion) on an older machine, even more so, no?

Message was edited by: Michael Murphy3 Feel free to chime in!

My machine runs with 8GB RAM.

ok, ok, hint taken!! :^)

I've updated my profile Michael... I'm running a new iMac 27" with 8GB RAM & 1TB Internal Drive. My iTunes library file is located on my Internal Drive, together with all my music, however, my Videos are either stored on a QNAP NAS, or an external Seagate drive, and linked to the iTunes library.

When the iTunes freeze happens, the iMac will have iTunes, Mail and Safari running. All my work stuff is closed down in the evening.

Similarly, I don't plug any iDevice in to charge (and therefore sync via wifi) until I go to bed, so I don't believe that to be the culprit either.

My guess at the moment, judging by a few other posters mentioning external drives, is maybe there's a timeout happening while waiting for external drives to spin up? Or maybe there's a bug somewhere that isn't telling them to wake up when the AppleTV needs to access the Mac?

There doesn't seem to be any pattern at all... it was happening 2 or 3 times a night, until the last update, then it happened again that evening. But it hasn't happened for the last couple of nights. (Sod's law says it'll happen tonight now! :-)

Murphy's Law calls for more backtracking before we move forward. Can we rule out brownouts with ownership of a an uninterruptible power supply (UPS with Battery Backup & Surge Protection) for computer command & control center?

Another step back & we can really go out on a limb & rule out the need for multiple UPS's since Apple TV has a built-in 6-watt universal power supply. But what if the TV itself....? Naaaaa, that's just plum crazy.

I'll check back w/y'all later for even more brainstorming 😀

Good Morning Vietnam!

Thanks to y'all; especially those who responded about RAM; 8GB certainly seems to be the norm. IMHO, 8GB RAM may well be the minimum threshold that is likely being breeched which results in iTunes freezing solid.

The jury has found iTunes 11.1.1 to be guilty of willful neglect. Obviously 11.1 pleaded guilty & has been terminated. We know that there is an accomplice, however, that has slipped through the cracks; the usual suspects being wi-fi, wifi/sync, external storage; so far at least.

If I may digress. I run with Snow Leopard on a wire (no wireless anything) and could kick myself in the butt for virtually downgrading iTunes 10.7 to v.11.0.5, so I can only speculate. I have no newfangled Podcast manager, no Apple TV, no Apple ecosystem devices, thank you very much 🙂 That being said, I awoke this morning thinking that when I download iTunes U files, I have a choice; I can allow simultaneous downloads, which I usually do. They seem to limit themselves to 4.

Nonetheless, it occurred to me that with either iTunes v. 11.1 or v. 11.1.1, that iTunes has gone plum crazy pushing boatloads of files. The modus operandi seems obvious; the motive may well be to push the loss-leaders such as podcasts down the faithfuls' throats; in addition to the monetized content, since one

segues into the other almost seamlessly.

For example, UFC podcasts are free. They are basically commercials. UFC episodes &/or subscriptions (albeit heavily edited) obviously cost money but way less than UFC proper content which probably has a markup similar to that of Apples' absolutely outrageous additional RAM markup. Anywho, can y'all see where I'm going with this. The 800 lb. gorilla is unseen, yet it hides the cloud - pushing, pushing, pushing. Not unlike, the US Mint's printing presses. Too much is never enough, so in either case we are enlisted as beta testers.

Carry on. If you want to touch gloves with the gorilla, do it now.

I agree that iTunes has become responsible for many many duties. Handling them all at once is probably very demanding. I think the mistake is in apple not providing any feedback as to what itunes is doing on a granular layer so we can see where errors occur. We need to see a log showing step one, two three etc so we can see where it gets stuck. We need more details than the console provides. If we had access to that information we could probably clear this up fairly quickly.

i am horrified to admit that i am running an old imac on lion with only 4mb of ram. i wish i could upgrade the ram, i really do. love my imac and it has always worked great.

itunes 11.1.1 is not. at all.

it has become the platform for so much more than managing music.

i downloaded it again tonight to re-install and saw some progress for the enter apple id pop-up and now the rainbow wheel just spins.... i do not have any devices syncing over wifi nor do i have apple tv.

i'm commenting because i think you ALL are wonderful. and i hope to see one of us post a solution soon ! or apple to give us a patch, that would be nice.

Some problem here. Locks up after a few days, but continues to stream to ATV and Squeezebox if required.

No changes on my system apart from upgrading iTunes.

It worked perfectly fine before the 11.x upgrade.

WIFI syncing is definitely the culprit on my iMAC (OSX) but it never crashes, it simply becomes unresponsive (so no error reporting back to Apple) and has to be closed from the dock. I am on 11.1.1 but this has been going on for at least the last two versions of itunes.

100% what is happening to me to.

I agree with this. Been having the beach ball problem since 11.1.1 - strangely, it always waits for the end of the song. At first I disabled automatic downloads of podcasts to which I'm subscirbed, but that only worked for 20 minutes or so - better than the previous 4-5 minutes, but not satisfactory. Then I turned AirPort off (which I've also recently updated, I've just realised) and iTunes behaved perfectly for over an hour and it was me that turned it off. It certainly seems to be linked to wi-fi in my case.

This is driving me batty. Before this, iTunes would relaunch as soon as I quit it. Found out that "I Love Stars" v 4.4 was causing it. Have to quit it before iTunes. I have deleted all iTunes PLISTS, reinstalled, submitted a bug report.

Lloyde, from what you say, waiting for the end of the song, its in line with what's happening at my end too.. I'll be watching a show on my AppleTV, and it'll get to the end (because it's buffered on the ATV), and when the menu appears, the show is marked as half watched. At this point, I know iTunes has frozen with the spinning beach ball. I have to force quit & restart.

However.. I don't even have Airport switched on on my iMac.. and none of my iDevices are syncing.

I'm testing another theory at the moment... I have a lot of my shows stored on external or NAS drives.. I'm wondering if it's something to do with my iMac going to sleep, and not responding to a wake up signal. A couple of the external drives are Seagates, which have a mind of their own when it comes to powering down, so maybe that's something else to look at.

I'lm going to try turning off Sleep mode for a few days and see if that makes any difference.