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General discussion

itunes error 4261 when trying to burn disc

Feb 4, 2005 7:30AM PST

hi, i really hope someone out there can help, as this is sending me loopy!i have contacted itunes 5 times, they didnt reply the first 4 times, they replied last night, but ignored my question, which was...
when i try to burn a cd i get the following error code...4261, please tell me what that means, and how to fix it.
they gave me a bog standard reply instead, even though id told them id tried everything suggested on the itunes site.
i now have loads of songs that i cant listen to as they are on my dads pooter, as i only have windows 98.
soooo, im using the latest edition of itunes, windows xp, the cdrw works fine with other programs, erm and everything else is ok, well as far as i can tell.

please can someone help me, thanks alot! sherbet.

Discussion is locked

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I'm unsure of your goal.
Oct 15, 2007 10:12AM PDT

I thought you wanted it to work. I think you are now adamant it must work with the drive you have. Tell me if I read that correctly.

Here I work the issues with the owner, fix it and demo it fixed with either a new drive, new firmware or any of the other fixes. If you remove one of the known cures then you may find silence.

Bob

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my problem solved (I guess)
Oct 15, 2007 10:54AM PDT

I had the same error message and saw a post by Sirjames on the first page....."If you are attempting to burn a file that has DRM from iTunes and you have exceeded your allowed attempts or you are accessing said files from a different PC than it is registered"

I tried to burn another disk with different songs (not purchased from iTunes) and it works just fine.

Thanks to Sirjames.

Oh and R. Proffitt, you sure sound condescending and a little pretentious with your replies. These people come here for some assistance not to be treated like kids.

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Sorry about that.
Oct 15, 2007 11:30AM PDT

I however will not take more time to rewrite these posts to avoid that. This is all volunteer so I hope you see I do try to help others out.

Cheers,

Bob

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can't burn CD's

I have tried to burn a playlist with newly bought tunes, which have NOT been copied before. It did not work. My drive works fine with WMP.

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It works.
Apr 9, 2010 1:27AM PDT

I tried to burn a disk on iTunes and towards the end it gave me the 4251. After ending all processes that began with "avg" I tried again and it burned successfully. I'm obviously using AVG, maybe this is the core of our problems?

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can't burn a CD

1) I thought you wanted it to work. I think you are now adamant it must work with the drive you have. Tell me if I read that correctly.

2) Here I work the issues with the owner, fix it and demo it fixed with either a new drive, new firmware or any of the other fixes. If you remove one of the known cures then you may find silence.

1) Yes, indeed I want it to work. Especially, when iTunes says that I have an acceptable drive to burn these playlists with. Have done it hundreds of times before.. So why is it not working now? Sounds bit odd, particularly as other iTunes owners get the same 4621 message?

2) ITunes says in the Preferences section that I have the right drive for the job. Don't get your drift at all..what do you mean with the last sentence.

We all appreciate that you work here as a volunteer, even more so when Apple/iTunes could not care a toss about the problems generated by their updates, which we are obliged to download and install. Just have a look on the iTunes Forum and see what problems people are having with the recent upgrades.. I am quite sure it has nothing to do with my drive..

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So you tried another drive and ...
Oct 15, 2007 1:50PM PDT

It's not that burn count limit?

I had one customer wait six months to let me swap the drive. Eventually most cave on this if you wait long enough.

Bob

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Can't burn CD

Change a drive? Why? With ne breath you say tha there is no cure and with a second one tht I should change my NEW drive... Obviously I am running round like a headless chicken.... Absolute waste of time on this site, to get anyh constructive comment...bibi

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Then on your NEW drive did you...
Oct 15, 2007 10:54PM PDT

Check if the maker issued new firmware?

You also did not answer my other question. It appears its also a factor.

And yes, I've had to change NEW drives as well to fix this. The question is then simple. Is it worth it to the owner for this to work or not?

Choose your goal then move towards it.

Bob

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A 4261 Suggestion
Apr 2, 2008 1:55PM PDT

I've just encountered this "unknown 4261 error" and a strange solution. Here's the course of how things went:

1 - Encountered two days ago trying to burn a specific play list in iTunes. Playlist contained both MP3 files and protected AAC. PC is four years old and never this problem to date.

Restarted the PC - no change. Changed brand of media - no change. Finally decreased burning speed from "maximum" to 20x and was able to burn this playlist. I thought I had it solved.

2 - Encountered again today on a different playlist in iTunes. This playlist contained only MP3 files. No matter how slow you set the burning speed it didn't want to burn.

Restarted PC - no change. Changed media - no change. Tried burning in RealPlayer - no change (same error, different looking dialog box). Tried burning different iTunes playlist - no change.

I created a new playlist of one MP3 song and burned it successfully.

I tried burning my original playlist and still got the error.

Finally, I MOVED the first song of the playlist from the first track to the last track and the playlist. Since it always bombed on the first track of the playlist, I wanted to see if it could burn the others and would then bomb on this track again. However, the CD successfully burned all the way through.

Here's the really strange part - I then moved the track BACK to the original order and it burns fine.

I don't have a solution or an explanation. My suggestion to everyone is to not dismiss that this is very file dependent, and not just file type. Don't be afraid to move your tracks around and see if you see the same behavior I did.

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Can someone please help me?
Apr 3, 2008 8:49AM PDT

I have tried almost everything I can possibly think of or that was suggested to fix itunes error 4251. I have degraded to 7.5, i've lowered the burning speed, i've changed the burning preferences, emailed itunes, called two different itunes numbers, and even switched around the first track to make it the last track and it still failed to burn. I wasted almost thirty blank CD's trying to fix this problem and i'm starting to get very frustrated. I even went to an apple store in my mall to see if they could help and the guy told me to look on here. So basically I realize that i'm just adding to the choir but is there anything else I can do to fix this?

Also can someone please tell me how to transfer all my music from itunes onto another player like windows media so I can burn from there. It seems whenever I save the library only some songs go onto it. For example the folder will be the artist and then the album and then inside the folder will be the songs. However some of the songs are folders instead and I can't seem to open them. If there was anyway I could fix that, then for a temporary solution I could burn CD's from there.

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Looking at your post.
Apr 3, 2008 11:09AM PDT

There are no clues to work with. This is a volunteer forum so try to approach it with a new post, all your own (not buried here) and HEED the words in red so the first reply is not asking for system info.
Bob

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WMP and iTunes
Apr 3, 2008 11:10AM PDT

If you are going to use Windows Media Player to burn you could just open both (iTunes and W. Media Player) then highlight the songs you want to burn and drag/drop them into the W. Media Player burn list. That way you dont have to fuss with creating new playlists or transfering all of your music.

That is what I have been doing. Yes, getting this iTunes thing fixed would be great but I have finally given up wasting time, let alone blank cds.

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error code 4261
Jan 7, 2009 5:31AM PST

This is how I fixed the problem. I bought Imation cd-r discs. They say for music, photos or data.

The ones that I had bought that would not work were Maxell CD-R Music. For some reason they would not work. I kept getting the error code 4261 etc.

So my advice is to buy Imation and make sure you get the CD-R that says music, photos, data.

Good luck!

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Error message when burning CDs
Sep 4, 2010 7:50PM PDT

I overcame this problem on my iMac by trashing ITunes 9 and the iTunes library, and installing the older iTunes 8. I'll stay with this until Apple gives an upgrade that fixes the problem!