Annoying Playlist Shuffle. Help!

Hey CK,

Yeah, I meant Library, not XML. Glad you got it fixed. I think it is "Interesting" that this is a problem across platforms.

Also, I can't really tell, but it seems that it cropped up for a lot of people at around the same time. I have to believe there was an "exterior force" involved. I know I did nothing to iTunes in the interim, and with you on a PC and me on a Mac it kind of rules out system software changes.

Glad its fixed... for now. (I never feel real good about a fix until I know why t broke.) I don't want to have to dump my library and all my playlists every fe months.

Rob

Hi Mike,

Although you lose all your playlists, if you still have podcasts in your library they will show up in the podcast list, and all you have to do is click "subscribe" again. The podcasts were the least of the problem with nuking the Library file... all the playlists, play counts, and date added info is lost. That kind of stunk, but I'm glad to have orderability of podcasts back!

Rob

That's too bad. Apple REALLY needs to fix this, it's a big pain and there's obviously something causing it.

Keep bugging apple via the feedback forms for both the shuffle and iTunes.

Hi Citizen,

That really stinks.

Questions:

Which version of iTunes are you using? (I reverted to 6.0.4)

Did iTunes crash or did you have to force quit at any time since the initial fix?

Has there been the Windows equivalent of a kernel panic, which I guess would be a total system crash-forced reboot?

Do you run scripts to process tag or other info? Did any of them hang?

I'm guessing the corruption is some how related to freezes, hangs and incomplete Library writes.

Do you have a recent backup? Although any tracks you added since the backup would not show in the library, it would be interesting to see using the old library, and reimporting the music from the music folder would fix the problem. You would only lose the data on the recently added songs.

Send another bug report to Apple. If this library file is that fragile, they need to come up with some kind of backup/restore plan.

Rob

iTunes 7.0.1 just came out, did it help with this problem at all (without having to rebuild your iTunes library)?

Hah ha hah hah hah. Yeah! I'm gonna d/l and run that baby right off the bat!

Nope, I think I'll be waiting for 7.5 at this rate.

Any brave souls out there? Please report!

But, remember... for many of us, this issue preceded the release of 7.0, and was a problem in at least 6.0.4 and 6.0.5.

Rob

I totally wouldn't recommend getting it if your iPod is working right now. But for someone who is currently in the broken state, not much risk in trying it. That's the only way we'd see if it fixes the problem anyway.

oops

Message was edited by: Chris CA

I solved this problem once, but should have written down the solution 😟

As I recall it is a problem with the iShuffle firmware - not iTunes. There are a number of "hidden" folders on the iShuffle. I did something to one of them - either blew it away or modified a file in it. I got the answer here about a year ago, but have not been able to find it again.

I have the problem again because I had to fix the "not updating playcount" problem - which was solved by blowing all of the files and folders away.

It's driving me nuts again!

Rebuilding the iTunes library definitely fixes it, but that's a pain. If there's a way to do it by tweaking the shuffle, that would be a huge improvement. Let us know if you figure anything out.

It happened again. I don't know what triggered it,
but this behavior appeared again.

I don't want to be erasing my library file every
three weeks to fix this. This has to be something
relatively simple to fix!

Hello CitizenClaw, try my fix in this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=560266&tstart=0



You will need the files from a working Shuffle, but it should save you from having to mess with your iTunes library file.