iTunes freezes

[Guacamole]

Itunes is not responding, I wanted to update my iPhone 4, iTunes gets stuck on Accessing iTunes Store and that's it.
I tried several times , had to restart , repair permissions and nothing.

This is iTunes 10.6.3 running on my macbook 10.5.8

is there a solution for this?

[SandboxGeneral]

Originally Posted by Guacamole

Itunes is not responding, I wanted to update my iPhone 4, iTunes gets stuck on Accessing iTunes Store and that's it.
I tried several times , had to restart , repair permissions and nothing.

This is iTunes 10.6.3 running on my macbook 10.5.8

is there a solution for this?

Yes, there is a solution, but we need to find the problem first. How long has iTunes been doing this? Are there any other apps that exhibit the same behavior?

It could some corrupt files or corrupt sectors on the HDD which houses iTunes files. Does your MacBook do any other odd things that could be related?

[Guacamole]

Originally Posted by SandboxGeneral

Yes, there is a solution, but we need to find the problem first. How long has iTunes been doing this? Are there any other apps that exhibit the same behavior?

It could some corrupt files or corrupt sectors on the HDD which houses iTunes files. Does your MacBook do any other odd things that could be related?

Since this is my old laptop , I only use it to update my iPhone , last time I used Itunes was weeks and weeks ago and it was fine
Now it freezes also when I go to Software Update, it goes to Checking for new software but it never ends checking, I have to cancel to get out

[SandboxGeneral]

Originally Posted by Guacamole

Since this is my old laptop , I only use it to update my iPhone , last time I used Itunes was weeks and weeks ago and it was fine
Now it freezes also when I go to Software Update, it goes to Checking for new software but it never ends checking, I have to cancel to get out

Well it's possible that the HDD is getting old and tired and probably has some bad sectors in it. Especially considering you have several apps having issues. There is a way to fix the HDD, if there are those problems with it.

I use a PC DOS-based program called Spinrite as a maintenance utility and data recovery utility on all my HDD's. You have to have an IBM-PC in order to use it though. You take the HDD out of the Mac and connect it to the IBM-PC and run the program. Below is my old MBP HDD in a Dell PC with Spinrite working on it.

Independent review of Spinrite (not me)

[Guacamole]

No, I don't have a pc... is there other way to check the hard drive. I did The Verify disk on utilities but it came back as OK

[SandboxGeneral]

Originally Posted by Guacamole

No, I don't have a pc... is there other way to check the hard drive. I did The Verify disk on utilities but it came back as OK

There are no other utilities that does what Spinrite does, but you can get a S.M.A.R.T. utility which can tell you the status of a HDD to a minor degree.

Here is one for Mac: SMART Utility.

SMART is Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology, SMART. And it's when we got the IDE drives that manufacturers like Compaq that were big users, consumers of these drives, they said we need some way of knowing what's going on in there. Now that you've moved the controller in there, you've got this integrated drive electronics, this IDE. It's a black box. How do we know how good it is, how solid it is, how long it's going to last? We'd like to know, before it dies, that it's getting kind of flaky in there. But thanks to having moved the electronics in there, we can't see into that anymore. We need some visibility into the drive. That's what the Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology gives us, theoretically, is an API, a means of asking the drive about things going on inside. It's a classic case of politics. The manufacturers did not want to provide this information.

So the problem with SMART is that - and I learned this when I added that technology - SpinRite 6 is the first version of SpinRite to dynamically monitor the drive's SMART system while it's running. And what I learned was that the SMART system is only useful when the drive is under load, that is, when it's doing work. And that's the beauty of SpinRite's use of the SMART system. There's a SMART analysis page in the SpinRite UI which shows you in real-time, for example, the amount of error correction the drive is doing per megabyte of data read. And it shows you the high point, the low point, and the average over time. So you're able to judge, literally in an analog fashion, judge the quality of the current quality of the drive when it's doing work.

The SMART system means nothing when you're not asking the drive to read things because it's only in reading that it has a potential problem. So it's one thing, it's sort of nice to have the SMART system around in the background. But unless you actually are watching it while you do a scan across the drive, it's not going to tell you that much. And of course the manufacturers know that. They're like, they're not wanting to actually demonstrate that, like create a means for judging drives, because then manufacturers would reject some of them.

Above text from Steve Gibson of the podcast Security Now, episode 385 (transcript)

[justperry]

Before even thinking about hardware problems, make a NEW account in the Accounts Preference Pane, then login into that new account and see if the problem persists there.

If you don't have problems in the new account then the problem lies inside the normal account and can be solved.

[Guacamole]

Originally Posted by justperry

Before even thinking about hardware problems, make a NEW account in the Accounts Preference Pane, then login into that new account and see if the problem persists there.

If you don't have problems in the new account then the problem lies inside the normal account and can be solved.

I created a new account and no problems with iTunes... I logged in again with my account and this time Itunes and Software update didn't freeze.
Many thanks !

[justperry]

Originally Posted by Guacamole

I created a new account and no problems with iTunes... I logged in again with my account and this time Itunes and Software update didn't freeze.
Many thanks !

Erm, that is strange.

Normally if you create a new account you have the problem or don't have them there, if you don't have them there and login into the normal account problems are still there.

Don't get this, and I think your problems will reoccur at a later point, if so login into that new User account again, use it for a while and if everything is OK then for sure there is a problem within your normal account, which can be fixed.

If that happens again, report back here.