itunes 11.4 crashes when syncing apps to ipad / iphone

I just got my new iPhone 6 and surprise surprise this problem continues. Below is an exasperating and informative dialogue with Apple Chat Support, which underlines why this problem continues to be unresolved. I have edited out any of my information.

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iPhone 6 Chat Transcript

Wednesday, October 29, 2014 01:53 AM
Duration: 0 seconds

Juron:
Thanks for contacting AppleCare chat support. Please give me a moment to look over your information.

Juron:
While Juron is reviewing your information she would like you to make note of this Case Number #686927579, for this interaction. If you have a case number from a previous interaction you can provide that now instead. She will be with you momentarily. Thank you for your patience!

Juron:
Hi David, thanks for chatting with me today and most of all thank you for your patience? How can I help you?

David:
Apple continues to be complacent and unresponsive to iTunes synch issues that have been going on for a very large number of people since iTunes 11.4 was launched

Juron:
David I am happy to help you with any issues you are having here.

Juron:
I am sorry to hear that the iTunes syncing is giving you trouble. I use my iTunes and devices frequently and would be lost without it working correctly.

Juron:
Can you tell me more about this issue you are having?

David:
well this is very nice to know, but this is what your colleagues have told me and lots of other people, but still the problem goes on without solution from Apple

Juron:
David what issue are you having with iTunes/

David:
i just told u what the problem was

Juron:
?

Juron:
You are having issues with syncing yes but what specifically is happening with syncing.

David:
i just told u, why do u people not recognise this is a long established central problem

David:
been going on for weeks

Juron:
David I do apologize you are having issues. I do know what there can be many issues with devices and syncing and various other issues with technology.

David:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6528204?start=0&tstart=0

Juron:
Can you tell me what issue you are having there.

David:
look at this community forum - this problem has been know by Apple since Sep 11, 2014 7:58 AM

David:
and still nothing is done, despite new IOS and iTunes updates

Juron:
David at this time I am not able to go through all of these forums. What can I assist you with here/

David:
that is silly, why not

David:
this is why this problem goes on and on, coz u guys don’t have continuity awareness of the MASSIVE problem

David:
so every time someone contact Apple Support it is a "new problem"

David:
when it is actually 6 weeks old

Juron:
No that is not the case.

Juron:
I am happy to help you with your issue here if you would like.

David:
yes it IS THE CASE

David:
you are wrong

David:
are you saying I'm lying?

David:
I just told u the exact same problem has been notified to Apple by lots of people since Sep 11, 2014 7:58 AM and Apple appear to have done nothing to fix it

Juron:
David I never stated once that you were lying.

Juron:
You asked if this was a new issue every time Apple is contacted and that is not the case.

David:
I have previously spoken to u guys, have a VERY long tech support phone call and they could not resolve the issue and now i have wasted my money on an iPhone 6, which still have the same problem

Juron:
David you have only told me that you are having a syncing issue but not what the actual issue is. What happens when you are trying to sync there?

David:
why do you people not know about this problem?

David:
I have told you several times what the problem is even in this chat

David:
and still you ask the same question

Juron:
David You have simply mentioned a syncing issue, is that correct/

Juron:
?

David:
yes

Juron:
And you have not acknowledged my question about what is happening when you sync, correct?

Juron:
I am unable to assist you without being able to find out more about your issue.

Juron:
I do understand that there may be many discussion forums detailing issues and I am not able to monitor them all.

Juron:
I can only take the help here one chat at a time.

Juron:
To do this I have to resolve your issues based upon what you are able to tell me.

David:
so why do u think u can solve this problem when dozens of your colleagues failed to do so?

Juron:
I really have no way to know without knowing the details of what is happening there.

Juron:
I can honestly let you know if I can or can’t help with those details of course.

David:
Apple is so full of ********

Juron:
David there is no need for you to use that language here.

David:
Sept 11 to 29 Oct and still no solution

David:
YES THERE IS

Juron:
I am happy to get you to a senior advisor here if you would like.

David:
YES PLEASE

Juron:
Getting them for you now here David.

Juron:
David it’ll be just a few minutes here while I am awaiting them to answer here.

David:
Me: Apple continues to be complacent and unresponsive to iTunes synch issues that have been going on for a very large number of people since iTunes 11.4 was launched - the problem was first raised on look at this community forum - this problem has been know by Apple on Apple Support Communities since Sep 11, 2014 7:58 AM. Lots of people, including me have raised the problem with Apple Chat Support and had escalations to Apple Phone Support, had long phone calls with Apple Phone Support and the technical people have so far failed to be able to fix the problem. The subsequent releases of iTunes and IOS have FAILED to resolve the problem

David:
Since iTunes 11.4 was released many people cannot:

Juron:
Thank you for that information David. Sync issues are handled on a case by case basis. While this forum does outline an issue that may be present for some this is not for all. I am happy to see what we can do to resolve your issue here.

David:
1. Synch to iTunes with their iPhone, iPad and iPod without iTunes crashing after a few minutes, despite the fact they have downloaded the latest versions of ITunes and IOS

Juron:
David I do have Alexander on here with us and will get you transferred here in just a moment.

David:
2. this is a thoroughly inadequate response. It is absurd Apple don’t centrally monitor serious issues - EXACTLY the same issue raised by a large number of your customers over SEVEN week period

David:
so i disagree each support issue is individual

Juron:
David I will transfer you now to Alexander.

David:
ok

Alexander:
Thanks for contacting AppleCare chat support. My name is Alexander. Please give me a moment to look over your information.

Alexander:
Hi David. I hope you are well. Just to recap, I took a look at the info provided and I see that we are chatting in about iTunes crashing when you try to sync your iPad. Is that correct?

David:
Apple continues to be complacent and unresponsive to iTunes synch issues that have been going on for a very large number of people since iTunes 11.4 was launched - the problem was first raised on Apple Support Communities on Sep 11, 2014 7:58 AM. Lots of people, including me have raised the problem with Apple Chat Support and had escalations to Apple Phone Support, had long phone calls with Apple Phone Support and the technical people have so far failed to be able to fix the problem. The subsequent releases of iTunes and IOS have FAILED to resolve the problem

David:
When people synch to iTunes with their iPhone, iPad and iPod without iTunes crashing after a few minutes, despite the fact they have downloaded the latest versions of ITunes and IOS

Alexander:
I’m very sorry you are having this problem with iTunes and trying to sync. I know it’s important to be able to sync your phone.

David:
Now i have purchased an iPhone 6 and it is exactly the same people

David:
problem

David:
please try not to be so patronising

David:
Why is Apple unable to recognise a serious and fundamental problem after 100s customers telling them about it

Alexander:
Understood. I’m very sorry that this new phone is also having the same problem. You mentioned that you contacted us before about this issue. I would like to review that case to see what was done. Do you have the serial number or case number from the last time you contacted us?

David:
not sure

Alexander:
Ok. Well, I certainly want to make sure that we take care of you correctly. You mentioned that you worked with a phone advisor who escalated this further for you. Do you still have that phone advisors contact information?

David:
got it - 669585707

Alexander:
Thank you. One moment.

Alexander:
Ok. That case number shows that you chatted in about your iPod having this issue. I do see that you worked with chat advisors only. Is that correct?

David:
Like everyone else with this problem we have hoped Apple would fix the bug with new updates of iTunes (after 11.4) and IOS but they have FAILED to do so]

David:
WE have not been able to synch our Apple devices to iTunes on a PC since iTunes 11.3 was still the latest version in mid-September 2014

David:
I have always had to synch with iCloud directly on the device suing Wi-Fi

David:
since then, it is the same for an iPhone, iPad or iPod (I have all three devices)

David:
I have IOS 8.1 installed on all my devices and the latest version of iTunes on my PC

David:
I thought with my new iPhone 6 it would be fine, but no, precisely the same problem

Alexander:
It certainly does sound like we are having a problem with iTunes and the iOS devices. I really want to get you pointed in the right direction so that we can move towards fixing this for you.

Alexander:
From the case number you provided, I see that you worked with only chat advisors and may not have made it to an advisor over the phone.

Alexander:
Is that correct?

David:
No, i had a very long phone call with Apple Phone Support after that - I think it lasted about 2.5 hours and despite senior tech people involved the problem could not be fixed

Alexander:
Ok. That would be logged under a different case number since it did not appear on the one you provided me. Did they provide you with their own contact information?

David:
the work around since then is backing up and synching my devices using iCloud and Wi-Fi

David:
I can't find a reference for it, but it would have been around 27 to 30 September

David:
Can you promise me you will escalate this to someone like Head of Customer Services centrally at Apple?

Alexander:
As a chat advisor, I do not have that ability.

David:
the best way for anyone to familiarise themselves with the problem is to go to a Apple Support Communities thread

David:
But your head of department would, right?

Alexander:
Chat advisors main role is to solve some of the more simple tech problems that occur. I wouldn’t be able to escalate this case on your behalf because I would have no way of contacting you back to continue working with you.

David:
i mean all large companies have defined escalation paths

David:
that is stupid

David:
no wonder Apple centrally have no visibility of this issue

Alexander:
Your correct. But as a chat advisor, the way to move forward would be with that phone advisor who should have escalated this to our engineers for you.

Alexander:
Did that phone advisor you worked with escalate this to an engineer your behalf?

David:
yes

David:
and the engineer could not fix it

David:
after 2.5 hours....

Alexander:
Okay. So this means that you would have received a callback from that senior advisor a few days laster. Did that happen?

David:
yes

David:
it is the same problem with everyone else on this Apple Support Communities thread - long phone calls with Apple engineers and no fix for the problem

David:
it is ridiculous

Alexander:
I certainly acknowledge that this is an issue. Are you using the same computer you had when you first encountered this problem?

David:
yes

Alexander:
What kind of computer is it?

David:
Windows 7 Ultimate

David:
a common theme on the Forum thread is people keep all their PC data on an external NAS drive

David:
so all their iTunes data

Alexander:
Ok. Have you tried to sync with with your data not on an external NAS drive?

David:
are u sure u guys can’t escalate issues to like the Department Head of your division?

David:
no, it is impractical all my data is on my NAS, the work around to change that is too time consuming to do

Alexander:
Ok. I have you tried syncing with a different computer?

David:
u can’t do that with iTunes, the phone data is unique to each PC

David:
coz of copyright protection for Apps and Music

David:
I mean u can only back up and synch on the PC with the iTunes account it was originally connected to

David:
the device

Alexander:
As time has gone on, we have made it easier and easier to sync with another computer. What I would do is try to sync with another computer just to make sure that syncing works with your devices. That will most likely work fine. This would isolate the issue to your computer specifically. If the common theme is that the data is on an External NAS drive, it sounds like iTunes would not support that.

Alexander:
If you do sync with another computer just to test, you can always sync it back with your original computer.

David:
well I have a SERIOUS problem with that last statement - " data is on an External NAS drive, it sounds like iTunes would not support that." as it worked fine for years before iTunes 11.4 was released

Alexander:
I am only speculating on what the possible reason would be. Sine all your devices have had this problem with this same computer, there must be something specific to your computer that is causing the problem. Since you mentioned that others are having a problem with this and they also have external NAS drives, which would be what makes sense to me. It may not be that it’s not compatible, but rather that it may be having issues with that.

David:
so Apple have caused this problem and I maintain they are accountable for resolving it

David:
NO

Alexander:
I certainly agree. I would love to have this taken care of for you. But as a chat advisor, I am not able to escalate it further. You would need to work with another phone advisor who can get this to an engineer once more. If the previous answer is that an engineer was unable to fix it, then we may not have a fix at this time.

David:
I just said, I have had no problems synching multiple Apple devices to my PC over a 7 year period, then as soon as I installed iTunes 11.4, this problem started

David:
so the problem is with iTunes, NOT people's PCs

Alexander:
If we had a problem with iTunes, our engineers would have had a solution for you when it was escalated. If you want to escalate it once more, I would certainly do that with another phone advisor.

David:
Apple is being really irresponsible with this problem

Alexander:
That would be the only way to move it up the chain of support.

David:
can these people check Apple Support Communities forum threads?

Alexander:
Yes. We have a team that actually goes through our support threads to see if we can hunt down new issues and so forth. I would certainly provide that to the senior advisor who helps you next over the phone so he can provide that to our engineers as well.

Same problem continues with iTunes 12 and IOS 801.

Very frustrating, I was hoping iTunes 12 would take care of the issue but apparently not.

It always fails at the same event - beginning of step 5 when it tries to make the very firs copying from the PC into the iPad

It has been a week and all is working well. If your issue is a UNC network share to store your itunes library.

1)Map a drive letter to the UNC share

2)Change the library location to the drive letter under preferences

3)select and delete all the applications in iTunes but do not delete the files (clears out existing links)

4) using the drive letter navigate to \Mobile Applications in explorer

5)Select all and drag and drop back into itunes (just click replace on any popup box) new or old

6)In Itunes update all applications to recent (since in step 5 you could be replace a new with a old unless you have the time to read each popup)

7)Sync

With a week worth of updates all has worked well since then. Clearly UNC shares for only the mobile applications have been broken and likely not a big enough issue (aka <1% users likely use UNC shares) to get apples attention. At least this seems to work for me.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has tested this method? Re: itunes 11.4 crashes when syncing apps to ipad / iphone

It should be the easiest way to map the apps to the correct folder and can easily be repeated after updates or new apps are added. I don't have a NAS so I cannot test personally,

tt2

I tried these scripts but they did not work for me. A before and after export to XML still showed UNC mapping and the crashing occurred. But they inspired my low tech delete and re-add method which is more time-consuming to execute.

Fair enough, I will try to set up a test rig to see if I can find a way to streamline the process.

tt2

Dr. Q,

many thanks to you and all the others who pointed out the problem with the UNC location. After having changed this to a mapped drive letter instead, everything works fine again for me. Weeks of frustration have hopefully come to an end now.

Thanks again.

This worked for me. Apps were causing iTunes to crash when syncing to any of my devices, and I had recently moved the iTunes library off my media PC and onto a Synology NAS. To fix this I:

1. Update all your apps in iTunes.
2. Closed iTunes
3. Mapped the music drive (directory) on the NAS to the M:\ drive on my PCs.
4. Copied all of the existing apps from the iTunes library (...iTunes/Mobile Applications to a temporary directory
5. Delete everything (all the apps) from the ...iTunes/Mobile Applications directory
6. To save time, go into the temp directory from step 3 above and delete all of the obvious duplicate older versions. For most apps the dupes are easy to spot based on the version number. But some version numbering systems don't sort in the correct order and some apps change their name (i.e. Sky Drive to One Drive) so the dupes aren't obvious.
7. Open iTunes, and In iTunes Edit/Preferences/Advanced made sure that iTunes was using M:\iTunes\iTunes Music as the folder,and that the "Keep iTunes Organized..." and "Copy files to iTunes Media Folder..." were both checked
8. In iTunes menus, File/Add File to Library (or Add Folder to Library) and add back in all of the apps from the temporary folder in step 3 above
9. Every time it finds a duplicate, ITunes will ask you incessantly if you want to replace the just installed version with the newer one it also found. Hello Apple, have you seen how Windows now lets you select the same settings when copying files and always keep the newer version instead of asking each time? Who knew Appe could learn something from Microsoft, but this is why there's step 6 above - simply to not have to answer this queestion so many times.
10. Resync my device (it now works, even with new apps I download). I did have to unsync music, close iTunes, restart and recheck music to get it to sync correctly. To say iTunes is buggy is an understatement.

One of the issues I had also seen was that half of my 64GB iPhone was consumed by "other", and there was nothing in the usage menu that would explain this. I suspect that in addition to the the apps not syncing correctly because they still pointed to the old directory on my PC and not the NAS, the music files had the same issue and left phantom files on the phone that were linked to the old iTunes location. A clean restore and then restore iPhone didn't fix this, only the steps above.

Apple: Can you add to the column fields the file name and location? That would help diagnose these issues.

Same issue. Its terrible that apple would allow this issue to exist for so long.

I've been having this trouble on my Windows 7sp1 64bit Desktop with iTunes 12.0.1.26 - iTunes Stopped Working with an error logged in the Application Event Logs:

Description:

Faulting application name: iTunes.exe, version: 12.0.1.26, time stamp: 0x543e558b

Faulting module name: MSVCR100.dll, version: 10.0.40219.332, time stamp: 0x4e1a9f56

Exception code: 0xc0000417

Fault offset: 0x0008af3e

Faulting process id: 0x10a0

Faulting application start time: 0x01cff9fb62bc787a

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\MSVCR100.dll

Report Id: bebaaafc-65ef-11e4-b674-b8ca3a7fb575

I am unable to install any apps from the desktop to any of my iPads or iPhones using iTunes, most significantly my shiny new iPad Air 2

I've been working with Apple now for a few weeks, capturing iTunes crash files and procdump (Windows/Sysinternals) tool information, passing it along to the engineers for analysis.

Just today I've been told that engineering needs more time to further review the information; apparently they have heard of this problem from others.

If you are having similar problems, you may want to let apple know. You can refer to my case: 684608563

The more people who can provide information, the faster they may be able to help,

Alan

Same thing for me. Using iTunes 12.0.1 and cant sync with new iphone 6, always crashes at copying apps. My iTunes library is installed on a NAS and still works fine with older ipods, but not itouch, iphone 4s or iphone 6. Hope Apple are looking at this.

does anyone know how I can downgrade to an older versions so I can update? A safe place to download

nevermind. I found an earlier version and it doesn't work. I get an error saying the my library was created using a newer version of iTunes. So I'm back to square one. THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!!!

If you roll back to an earlier build of iTunes you have to roll back the library too. See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash. After restoring an older .itl file drag the contents of the Mobile Applications folder into your library and let the newer versions replace those that were in the older database.

tt2

I'M FIXED!!! Spent 2 hrs on the phone with Apple. Completely uninstalled iTunes and the extra programs (in a specific order) and restarted. Then went through the sync process again and found which apps were crashing it (Wikipedia & Google). Went to the iTunes Store/MyApps and deleted the apps from there. I was previously trying to delete from my phone and from the phone in iTunes, not from the Store where the files were stored. After that, I was able to sync completely. YAY!!!