itunes 11.4 crashes when syncing apps to ipad / iphone

AppleSupportDontCare

I assume your media is stored on your NAS and otherwise you have setup that is consistent with themes of this forum post . So after you created a named letter drive (such as R:) from the windows PC running your iTunes app .. and then did the other steps specified .. did you then check the individual apps within your iTunes library via right click .. get info .. click on file tab then read the location .. are all apps showing the letter mapping rather than UNC?

As to apples respond .. apples financial incentive as a company is NOT to support use of NAS to store your own media .. they make more money selling you media via iTunes store which is stored in the cloud which then requires you to buy more cloud storage to do online backups ... customer use of NAS localizes this heavy lifting of data and takes you down a path .. lets just be honest about this .. just skimming this one forum post there is NO way apple is not fully aware of this problem

Hi lottytx,

My setup is Windows 7 Home Premium SVpack 1 running iTunes 12 (problem started with iTunes 11.4). I've got a NAS drive attached to the network which has been running sweetly up until iTunes 11.4. The NAS contains my iTunes media folder with all my apps, music etc. My NAS is visible to iTunes using the following link: \\NASSTORAGE\iTunes\iTunes Media

Just had another go using your suggestions but iTunes 12 is just sooooo slow. I'm really at the point now of ditching this whole setup because It's just so unusable. I'm just not jumping through any more hoops - i've wasted enough time on this POS.

I agree with your last paragraph. Only thing is i was just re-iterating what the support folk said to me - me personally, I don't believe a word that comes out of their corporate support mouth. And yes, i believe they are aware of the problem - they're either just not interested or they want people to transfer on to iCloud.

Looks like i'll be going back to my trusty old Sony Network Walkman for music storage.

here's what Wozniak had to say about the cloud - I agree with him:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2012/08/06/apple-co-founder-steve-wozn iak-distrusts-the-cloud-is-he-right/

AppleSupportDontCare

Take a deep breath. I get it .. its very frustrating ... but based on your reply I think you can get through this with 5 minutes of "work" ... one thing is you did not answer my question .. if you goto apps .. right click .. select "get info" then file tab .. how does the location read at bottom .. is this UNC .. if so then you have NOT fix the file mapping .. remember if you have 200+ apps all have to have the drive letter mapping to get a clean sync .. yes I understand how your media folder is mapped UNC under edit preferences advanced .. you do not need to change that .. try this, open iTunes ..

goto the apps ... click on "my apps" then click control A .. that will select all apps .. delete .. you will then get prompted with box .. select "keep files" ... all this does is delete the mapping within the iTunes library file .. so long as you select "keep files" the files that are stored on your media folder will remain there ..

next import all the files back into iTunes using the mapped letter drive (previously explained) .. iTunes file add folder to library .. using the mapped letter drive go select the folder on your nas with your apps .. should be named mobile applications .. depending on how many apps you have this will take some time .. 30 min but just processing time not work .. just go do some other work ... once its done you are almost ready to try a sync .. but first make sure to close iTunes and logout and back into your PC account .. no need to reboot but that ok also

next start iTunes and try to sync .. if it works great your done, if not do not panic ... my guess is you have another sub problem .. look at your device and report back with results .. for example if there is a bunch of waiting installs .. you need to clear those off before things will go smoothly .. but report back

Another problem I ran into upfront with this problem weeks ago is I had many out of date apps in my applications folder .. I had to do some low level clean up .. this was an entirely separate problem .. this sort of hit me when I was doing the mass delete and re-import .. the re-import process got indigestion with the out of date apps .. its really had to blame that on apple and specifically on the bug on this forum posting but still given the work around I had to deal with it ..

key point here is the steps herein do not require you to uninstall or reinstall or move anything or even change the media folder mapping (ie edit preferences advanced .. just keep that UNC ... reason I did not change this here is just to minimize any config changes hoping apple fixes .. once they fix then should resume working without having to undo big config changes .. the flip side is you have to maintenance this step as noted below)

Other notes

Any new app updates after .. must do an incremental delete and re-import .. this must shorter amount of time to import since only dealing with few apps at time ... for example today before I upgraded to 8.1 on bunch of my devices I had to delete and re-import about 20 apps using basically same technique just substituting the file import files rather than folder)

Good luck

You may be able to use my script ConsolidateByMoving to update the links to your apps so they connect via a mapped drive instead of the UNC path. Test on a single app first. Assuming your media folder path is along the lines of \\server\share\<path to media folder> then map \\server\share to a convenient letter, e.g. X: and get the script to "consolidate" to X:\<path to media folder>. It should adjust the path that iTunes uses without moving or copying anything.

See also CleanDeadApps which, um, cleans up dead app files. Might be best to use this one first before swapping the paths around just to reduce the risk of confusion. I've not thought about testing its behaviour when there are multiple paths to the Mobile Applications folder.

tt2

Hi lottytx,

Thanks for the lengthy and detailed reply. I'm giving it one last go with your suggestions so hopefully this'll work (I've so many apps; it's taking forever). But I'll let you know how it goes.

Regards

Guys,

See my earlier stuff using CopyTrans.

A little easier to do, (but seems to work) its a little more time consuming but I have been syncing my iPad and iPhone 4 regularly since with no issues.

Basically you are using CopyTrans Apps to directly copy the apps which have stuck to the device.

Its free.....so what do you have to lose?

Remember you can get your music over directly using CopyTrans manager even if your apps are stuck!

Thats also free

.....And no! I don't work for them:)

Hi

I am trying to unsubscribe from these emails but my preferences contain no option to allow this.

Cheers

Ross

Dr Ross Lamplugh

Chairman Ochre Health Group

Ross, log into this forum and press unfollow on thread.

finally managed to get my phone to sync today after giving up on Apple.

In the end it turned out to be pretty painless for me, when i synced I had 8 Greyed out apps on phone once iTunes crashes. I plugged phone back in, canceled sync, went to apps and removed these apps. The sync then worked fine

The fix is actually simple once you know what to do.

It's crashing because your iTunes library is not local to your computer -- it's on a NAS or DFS store or whatever.

1. Copy the entire iTunes folder from the remote storage to anywhere local (I picked C:\users\%username%\music\).

2. Go into preferences by holding Alt to bring down the menu, then click Edit > Prefernces.

3. Click Advanced and change the iTunes library to C:\users\%username%\music\iTunes\iTunes Media

4. HERE’S THE TRICK: Close iTunes

5. Open iTunes and QUICKLY hold Shift right after you click to open it. This asks you to pick a new library. Select Existing Library, and point to the “C:\users\%username%\music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl” file.

6. iTunes will then open. It froze for me for a while, so I force quit it with task manager and reopened it and then it opened fine.

7. Then, let it sync! It will sync!

***fyi %username% represents your username

You can also move the library back to the network storage after the initial sync, doing the same exact steps but changing all the locations to the network location.

I had same problem. Once I realized that apple screwed up the code and the apps do not recognize UNC I fixed in 5 minutes.

1. Map a drive letter to your NAS
2. Hold "shift" and start iTunes.

3. Select "use a different library"

4. Browse to your iTunes library using the drive letter you mapped.

5. I synced and it worked fine.

No copying stuff anywhere.

Well done you BangoSkank, only 5 minutes lost, you must be a genius. However having lost many, many hours of my time, and data through trying to fix this problem its important to recognize that Apple screwed up badly here, and a) did not do the appropriate testing for this upgrade and b) have not even now come forward to acknowledge and apologise for this major issue.

PS yes I've finally resolved the problem on my iphone thanks to the advice on this forum. I pity the many other users who are still struggling with it and no doubt think they have done something wrong.

Had this same issue and I use a NAS. After 3 weeks of watching the post update to finally suggest a mapped drive that works, at least for me. I just mapped \\server\share to a drive letter(T:) and under itunes prefrences changed \\server\share to T:\ and after updating and sorting the already sorted files all was well and I get a clean sync. I have seen this before with other programs where UNC don't work after a update.

Apple scours the internet for problems like "cannot setup my wife on a family account" via a twitter fead and hunts the owner down but they cannot simple post to this thread that they run and say hey, "Just use a mapped drive". Apple if you are serious about customer support start with your own discussion threads. Seems the news should pick up the lack of apple response on bigger issues.

Spoke too soon. That fixed the ipad issue. But now a sync to upgrade to the iphone 6 and FAIL! crashed again.

If you have a Windows Small Business Server, or Server 2012 Essentials, the default setup is to redirect the user folders to the server. So everyone's Music folder is automatically located at \\Server\Folder Redirection\User\Music

Who in their right mind would want to map all the user's music folders and then rebuild everyone's iTunes library?

It's amazing to me that Apple is completely ignoring this, they have released three versions with this bug.

And the bug is in Apple Mobile Device Support, not specifically in iTunes.

Ok further update. So now knowing it is some function apple calls on the apps during sync down not like the UNC it also seem even if you change the Itunes location in preferences the library keeps the old location on existing app. Evident in a XML export. ARGH. After many wasted hours; what working and allowed me to sync the iphone 6 was.

Goto Apps in Itunes and delete them all of them to flush out the old UNC location. Do not delete the file.s Using a windows explorer opened with the drive letter I selected all the ipa files and added them back to itunes via drag and copy. In a lazy fashion place the mouse on the screen where replace pops up and watch a movie while clicking replace on all the old or newer versions exist. After a million clicks and a sore finger it will finish. Then in itunes update all the apps back to the recent version. Finally sync. After a lengthy sync the new iphone has all the apps. It is clear in my case itunes is broke with UNC mapped shares.

I stick with apple because it just works. This is really sad that after 4 weeks this is not fixed and you cost your users hours stabbing in the dark.? If IOS no longer provides easy of use, even those who are IT savy, it may be time to consider the alternatives. Also while ranting on apple. Hey apple why no unread count on email folders???? If you rank a phone task 1)phone calls 2)email 3) social wasting of time. I cannot use your phone for 2 since email sorts in folders on the server for me so you only inform me of junk that makes my inbox! Thanks!. IOS 8 and you think you could put some of your talent on fixing this someone between version 1 and 8.