upgraded to itunes 11.4 and now it crashes on every sync

James,

I cannot thank you enough. This problem has plagued me since 8.0 and 11.4 came out. I run Windows 64 bit Windows 7 with a NetGear ReadyNAS 2 terabyte NAS drive on the network. My iTunes library is stored there. I followed your instructions after trying countless others and Cha Ching! It worked.

Thanks!

Dave 🙂

I tried making sure the apps were up to date on both computer and iphone, no change.

but I was storing my media files on a ReadyNAS.

So I mapped a drive to my media file, and pointed iTunes to that (in iTunes/advanced preferences/advanced/itunes media file location (Just the media folder location was changed, not the library files, so I didn't have to select a new library).

no change. it still crashes when trying to sync the apps (and of course never gets to sync the music).

the only thing different about what I did and what you did was that it seems ALL your media files, including the *.itdb files are located on your nas, where in my case only the media, and NOT the itdb files are located there. I assume this because of the shift/select library location - my itdb files didn't move so I didn't have to do this.

but perhaps if I moved the entire set of files to the nas, THEN mapped it....; ill do it tomorrow and see what happens.

note I have been corresponding with apple, and they are clueless about this. they also told me they don't follow the forums. Guess that's why this hasn't gotten fixed yet.

I Have not tried James solution, but I expect that it will work for me as all of my library is stored on the NAS device.

however, this is only a work around not a complete fix. To map a drive requires that you use up one of the available drive letters. This may not matter on simple networks, but in my cars I use most of the available drive letters and taking up one of the few remaining ones because of an iTunes error is not acceptable.

I have the same problem - a QNAP TS-509 Pro with iTunes-Library and all media data on it, while using a Windows 8.1 64bit computer to access it via an UNC (\\TS509\Qmultimedia\iTunes). Could sync perfectly up to and including iTunes 11.3; after the upgrade to 11.4 every sync brought iTunes down.

Was REALLY happy today to learn about the update of iTunes to 12.0.1 which I hoped would solve the trouble, but it didn't - same prob as before...

Trying just now with the drive letter - but I agree, this can only be a workaround, and it seems that the Apple guys were able to do this alright before 11.4.

Can anyone from Apple comment on that? I don't think this would be pretty hard to reproduce in a test environment there - and as I can see from the messages here, it seems to be a pretty common thing.

Apple - any comments from official side?

Just wanted to add that I have the same problem with crashing and I am NOT using a NAS.

Same issue - gets to Apps synch, iTunes.exe crashes. I have a regular laptop with a regular hard drive - no network mapping, no NAS attached, nothing like that. Just a standard old iTunes installation with an iPhone 6 and it still crashes like described in this thread.

I upgraded to the newest 12.01, and it seemed to work for a bit

but then the same behavior returned.

apple support had told me they thought it was the nas, and that I should move the data over. I waited for this new iTunes version (they told me it was just a few days to release) to see if I could avoid moving all the data etc.

but because the new version 12.01 didn't work, I went ahead and moved everything over; over 120GB.

and I still have the issue.

now to be fair, this computer has multiple drives, and the library is on the D drive, not the main C drive. this is because my C drive is flash and just doesn't have the room.

but having the files entirely on the local computer failed.

so I took my laptop (which also has flash) and backed up the old phone there, and then restored to my iphone6

and it worked (for the most part, it was missing a few apps that didn't copy over for some reason, probably a remnant of me trying to find if some app was causing the problem)

note, the media file is also on drive D here as well (I have two small flash drives in the laptop)

so in conclusion:

we have media files on nas's that never seem to work

we have media files on D drives (non main drives) that don't work on at least one computer

And we have media files on a D drive that DOES work on another computer.

the really difference between the two systems: the music and the outlook data.

so I have no clue

Worked for me. Many Thanks! I think I had tried this once before with 11.4 and it didn't work.

Prior to this I had uninstalled itunes, Quick time, Apple Software Update, Apple Mobil Device Support, Binjour, and Apple Application Support. Rebooted (Windows & Pro) and then installed itunes 12. Itunes still crashed when trying to update/install Apps.

After reading your post I held the shift key down and changed the library path to a mapped drive instead of the UNC path. Worked like a charm with both my iPhone 5 and my iPad Air. I am on a Windows network and the mapped drive was already there so I didn't need to use another drive letter.

Excellent catch!

This worked for me as well with Win7 (64x) Itunes 12, Iphone IOS 8.1, and ITunes Library accessing my NAS. Switched from UNC to Mapped drive and Voila!

Thanks

I don't have anything on a NAS just a bog standard installation and iTunes just crashes every time it reaches the syncing apps part. I am just bored ******** of this now. I'm sick of reading about how many billions of dollars Apple are making as it just leads me to believe that once they have your money they frankly couldn't give a flying f**k about you. I have 2 iPhones and an iPad 2 which has just been turned into a slug by iOS8 and frankly this will be the last penny I ever spend on Apple products until they get their money grabbing hands out of their arses and fix these issues without being told to do so. I also control the mobile phone purchases as part of my job and I'm pulling the iPhone as a choice. Sick of their arrogance now.

Hi, I have tried Jame's solution but no joy.

For those of you for whom is works can you provide explicit instructions for the mapping of the drive - I have tried this and i still have a problem.......please help.

Would be even better of Apple fixed the problem..

David

Try this:

go to APPS in iTunes, select ALL OF YOUR APPS. Right click on them and delete. ALL OF THEM. Note that it doesn't seem to matter if you say to delete the underlying files or not (after you say delete, it gives you a choice to delete the actual file like in iTunes when you delete a song- I tried it both ways, didn't matter).

Once this is done, sync your device.

Note that NONE of your purchases are gone, just the pointers to the files in the media folder (and the physical files themselves if you selected yes when asked). WARNING: You cant just delete them directly from the media/mobile applications folder (I tried that). You HAVE to delete them in iTunes; only there will it delete the pointer that is giving you the problem.

If you want to get all your apps back on your computer (which you don't need to do since they are still on your iphone/ipad device, but you may want to anyway - but please wait until you verify that sync works) you have two choices;

1 just wait for them to update, and a new version will be downloaded then. this might take months for all the apps, but again it doesn't really matter since you don't need them locally; or

2 go to iTunes, Apps store, apps. Down at the bottom there will be 'purchased' which you will select, and it will load icons for each app you have downloaded. Now you can either download them one at a time, or select 'download all' and wait. I have over 400 apps, so it takes an hour or so to download them all.

I have now done this technique twice, and it worked both times and most importantly stayed fixed. So I hope this helps you as well.

Let us know either way if you try this.

mark

Fix for sync crashing that keeps iTunes files on NAS

🙂 Works for me with Win 8.1 64bit, itunes12, ios 8.1 iphone 6plus.

😠 Sadly needs a registry edit.

The problem for me stems from the fact that iTunes runs as an administrator in windows 8

When an individual's user profile is identified as an administrator, Windows does not grant that user special admin rights, instead it appears to create a second user account that has the administrative permissions and has the same password as the user's profile.

• This means when iTunes runs as an admin it is not running with the same permissions as the user profile.
• This impacts the way that network drives are mapped.
• A user maps a networked share to a named letter drive but that mapping is NOT shared with the mirrored admin account.

You can see this by running the CMD command as a regular user and then running it as an administrator.

• Search for cmd and, when the results appear, left click on on the icon for "Command Prompt" to launch with the regular method,
• With this non-admin DOS prompt you can navigate to the mapped drive letter (e.g. H) just by typing H:
• Search for cmd again but this time right click on the icon for "Command Prompt" and choose to run it as an administrator
• With this admin DOS prompt if you type H: it cannot navigate. It has to use the UNC path that looks like \\SERVER\SHARE

This website give more details and introduced a work around for this problem; configure the EnableLinkedConnections registry value.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee844140(v=ws.10).aspx

• To configure the EnableLinkedConnections registry value
• Click Start, type regedit in the Start programs and files box, and then press ENTER.
• Locate and then right-click the registry subkeyHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Sys tem.
• Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
• Type EnableLinkedConnections, and then press ENTER.
• Right-click EnableLinkedConnections, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
• Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.

Implementing this change in the registry and restarting windows tells all apps launched as an administrator to use a mapped drive letter if that is already assigned by a non-administrator profile. Now iTunes, running in administrator mode, can see the same mapped network drive H: instead of needing the UNC path. Try out that cmd trick from earlier to prove it.

But, all the files in iTunes are still pointing to the UNC path.

We can fix those.

• launch iTunes with Shift key and browse to the non-UNC path of the existing library.
• The software automatically updates the xml file with new paths using the mapped drive name (no need to update the xml manually).
• It also updates the location of the media files in the iTunes preferences
• This fixes the paths for the music files, podcasts, Movies, TV shows, iTunes U, books, and Tones files (probably because they are all inside the "iTunes Music" directory).

Apps are not inside that directory and after this change they still have the UNC path as their associated location.

• Rename the "Mobile Applications" Folder to break the link from iTunes to the original files.
• Double click on any Mobile app icon in iTunes.
• You will be prompted to find the file so locate it in the renamed folder, using the mapped drive (not the UNC) path.
• After successfully updating that one file, iTunes prompts to search in the same location for other missing files.
• Say yes.
• Take a break until it finishes finding apps.
• But then iTunes will want to add more apps it downloads to the "Mobile Applications" directory which no longer exists.

so...

• Go back to the windows folder and change the name of the directory you just renamed back to "Mobile Applications".
• Miraculously iTunes 'follows' the files from their old location and instantly all the apps in iTunes show their path as being in the "Mobile Applications" directory.

Sync your iphone 6 and 6 plus with iTunes 12 without error!

Legend - this was relatively easy and it worked!!!

It is a pity that this work around is needed rather than Apple actually developing a proper solution!!

iTunes 12.1 out today and appears to have fixed this issue. I
synced 1 device after intentionally leaving incremental updated apps with UNC
mapping (per previous posting). So the devices fully syncd with a mix of drive
letter mapping and UNC. Probably best to do one final cleanup to get all drive
mappings consistent with your default per edit; preferences; advanced; Itunes
Media Folder location.

All the best