itunes 11.4 crashes when syncing apps to ipad / iphone

Hey, I think Apple don't care coz they want PC users to all go and buy iMacs!

For clarity on a PC the library file is typically on the local PC (for W7 \Users\[your username]\My Music\ .... then iTunes Library.itl .. where as the underlying app files may be stored on a network location (a NAS in my situation)

The location of the files are mapped under preferences ; advanced

Well, it looks like you guys can add another person to the list with this problem. I am running Windows Vista and the latest version of iTunes. I just picked up the iPhone 6 this morning and was able to restore my settings from the old phone to the new phone, but when it gets to installing the Apps during the sync process the program crashes. All of my apps are greyed out.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with an Apple tech today, but we weren't able to resolve the issue. She is doing more research and supposed to be calling me back in the morning.

One interesting note here is that my iPad mini syncs up just fine with the latest updates installed as did my 4s. It's just this new 6 that is giving me the issues. Hopefully we get a resolution soon!

Thanks glowfish, your solution appears to be working for me. What I was doing wrong was not uninstalling all Apple related software before installing the older version of iTunes.

As the crash seems to consistently occur at the synch Apps stage, In iTunes I manually de-select the "Automatically install new Apps" option (as you can still download them on a device through the App Store App), but all my devices continue to crash when synching.

The safety net strategy im resorting to is backing up my devices using iCloud via Wi-Fi and using the App Store App on the device only, not connecting it to iTunes on my PC. Not sure if this is quite the same as synching, but at least my data is protected.

I may have found a potential reason this is happening, at least this "seems" to have sorted out my issue.

I had an app that was no longer available on the App Store (BLink RC - it's for my media player). I copied the files from Windows Explorer to a new location so I wouldn't lose them, then deleted the app from iTunes. As soon as I'd done that, iTunes was able to sync and didn't crash.

I hope that helps someone.

I am having the same issue, both iPhone 4s and 5 (both iOS 8) just hang when trying to sync with latest iTunes update.

Here is what worked for me.

I made a copy of just the mobile application folder from my NAS and placed the folder C:\Users\{username}\Music\iTunes\mobile application.

Went to iTunes and deleted all the Apps listed in the library. I then went to File > Add Folder to Library... and added the applications back from path C:\Users\{username}\Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications. Adding only the applications locally allowed me to keep everything else, such as music, on the NAS. The issue still needs to fix, but save Gigs if you do not have much space to spare.

Sounds like a solid plan for a work-around guillew

What worked for me is to independently update apps on iTunes .. and then each device over wifi prior to updating (I have many iphones and ipads). I guess this avoids the iTunes app detecting that it needs to load apps during the sync process. As long as I do this first all my devices run a full clean sync without crashing iTunes. Further I was able to upgrade to iOS 8.

Additionally this avoids having to move my iTunes files stored on NAS which is not really practically as I have 3T of music and movies.

With that said, if iTunes apps get out of sequence with the device then iTunes crashes without exception. Certainly this is a workaround and not a long term solution. Apples needs to fix the bug and release a new version of iTunes.

This worked for me. It's important to delete all the apple stuff ( although I didnt delete iCloud). It's syncing now. However after it's finished I'm enabling iCloud backup so I don't have to work with iTunes again.

What a pain moving to the iPhone 6, easily added an additional 2 hours to the process. I went the route of making the apps on the iTunes Library on my NAS exactly the same as on the iPhone 6. So this took a while as I had to download each app to the phone manually which took some time for large apps. I'm in business now but it made the experience of getting a new phone work and not at all fun.

Just got off the phone with tech support and was able to solve my own problem.

Windows 7 32-bit, iTunes 11.4, files on a NAS, crashing the same on the 'syncing apps' part of the update. Apple will need to do an update to iTunes to fix the problem. Until that point, here is a work around.

1. Connect your phone. If it starts to sync, IMMEDIATELY stop it. (You can hover over the spinning arrow and it will change to an X that you can click).
   
2. Select your phone from the device list:
   
3. Select 'Apps' from the top bar:
   
4. You will see many apps marked as 'Will Install':
   
5. Each click of the 'Will Install' will toggle between 'Install' and 'Will Install'. You want to change it to 'Install' (which, perhaps confusingly, means that it won't be installed when you sync):
   
6. Make sure you change ALL of the apps that are marked 'Will Install' to 'Install'. Double-check and maybe even Triple-check the list. If any one is marked 'Will Install' iTunes will crash.
7. Sync the phone. It should complete now.
8. On the phone, download any apps from the App Store that you want on the phone.

I agree that this is a workaround, but it worked for me and I'm sure that Apple will fix it in the next version of iTunes.

Thank you guys for posting what worked.

After I went and manually updated ALL of the apps in the iPhone and the iTunes library my sync started working for my iPhone 6.

Thanks jkriegshauser. It worked perfectly. BTW, it was also working with synching over WiFi, but that takes much longer.