iTunes 4.9 Special Report: Frequent music playing stalls/freezes

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 11:46 a.m. PT

4 min read

A number of users are reporting an issue where iTunes 4.9 repeatedly stalls while playing music. In the most common cases, the entire system becomes unresponsive for several seconds and music stops playing. In less common cases, music play continues but the iTunes user interface is frozen for 30 seconds to one minute.

For many users, the stall is accompanied by a sharp spike iTunes' processor usage, which can be seen in Process Viewer (located in Applications/Utilities).

MacFixIt reader Nick McSpadden's description is typical:

"I was reading the MacFixit website, and discovered your post about the iTunes 4.9 problem. I've been sharing the same problem. Playing extended amounts of music (typically 3 or more hours of continuous play) has resulted in frequent "freezes." The first time, it froze after ending one song and beginning another. Since this occasionally has happened to me in the past, I figured it just hit a hard disk snag on that one song and I deleted and re-entered the song into the library and had no further problems.

"However, it continued to happen, but never twice on the same song or set. Several times it happened during a 'switch,' when one song would end and the next would begin, as that was most common. Occasionally, it did freeze during the middle of a track. iTunes became completely unresponsive, and I also noticed that having an iPod plugged in or playing off the iPod during this time was doubly fatal.

"With an iPod plugged in, I was unable to force quit iTunes (especially if it was playing off the iPod). Attempting to do so would eventually hang the whole system, with only a forced restart being the solution. An attempt to SSH into my machine from another local networked computer showed a process that was stuck and couldn't be killed save a full restart. A full system restart (shutdown -r now) took several minutes (iTunes still wouldn't die!) until I forced the power off with a hard shutdown and rebooted (which is not my preferred method of choice for solving problems... there goes my uptime)."

"The frequent iTunes hangs proved to be very fatal for my iPod, as the process of copying a new import's worth of songs onto the iPod resulted in a similar hang. I'm not sure if this is my iPod having problems (I've noticed some issues with its drive), but partway through the copy via the standard Firewire Dock, the bar stopped moving and the song stopped copying. The little cancel "x" button would click, but had no result. iTunes would once again hang up. Again, this proved to be very bad for the iPod, as the iPod then had lots of drive/file system problems. My end result was having to reformat my iPod (which gets very angry if you disconnect it while the "do not disconnect" message is up) and copy songs over again."

"This of course didn't work either because iTunes was still screwing up when I tried to copy songs back on. My solution? Reinstall iTunes.

"It worked fine for a while. Then I had the same problem- the copy bar would hang. iTunes would be fine until I tried to do anything, at which point I'd get the Infinite Spinning Beachball of Failure. Force-quitting again resulted in my iPod being unhappy, as force-quitting iTunes while it's accessing the iPod causes the iPod to hang, iTunes to hang and be unkillable, the device manager to commit suicide, and will also curdle any milk in the house and scratch any nearby CDs. A hard-shutdown-restart was the only solution."

Solutions

In some cases, this issue can be solved by selecting all of the tracks in your iTunes library then using the command "Convert ID3 Tags" in the "Advanced" menu to set ID3 tags at version 2.3.

In more drastic cases, you may need to re-build your iTunes library by quitting iTunes if it is open, then deleting the following files from the folder ~/Music/iTunes (~ indicates your current user home directory):

iTunes 4 Music Library

iTunes Music Library.xml

and the following files from the folder ~/Library/Preferences

com.apple.iTunes.plist

com.apple.iTunes.[various numbers].plist

com.apple.iTunesHelper.plist

You will now need launch iTunes then either select from the prompt, or drag to the main window your iTunes music library folder, located at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music, rebuilding the Library index file.

Failing these two methods, the only other viable workaround seems to be a reversion to iTunes 4.7.1.