Q: 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.