Itunes won't eject my shuffle

I was asked to update Itunes which I did. I then tried to sync the Shuffle and after it was done, I couldn't eject because I got an error message about the ipod being used by other program or something like that. I actually had to alt/control/delete and end the program. I repeated the process and this time, it froze. I re-started the computer. It synched OK but when it was ready to be ejected, it froze again when I tried to eject. I factory restored the shuffle because in the process, I saw almost 1G used up by "OTHER" even though I only had music synched. After the correct synching, I tried to eject and the same thing happened. Itunes froze again and I had to get out of it by ending the task. Itunes seems to be getting worse with every update. What's going on? How can I fix this problem? I saw another person having similar error message and the responder suggested turning off or deleting Real Player program. I don't have that on my Windows.