iPhone 3GS, iTunes 10.5.3.3, Win 7 64bit... not happy

[MagicMatt]

I've just got an old iPhone 3GS. It is the 16Gb version, and had a damaged screen which I have had replaced. As far as I can tell it works fine - I can connect to my WiFi, 3G seems fine, makes calls, runs apps... as far as I can tell it's all ok. It has the latest iOS 5 installed.

I have a Laptop running Win 7 64bit. Again all seems fine with the PC - WiFi working, but it's connected to my network via LAN anyway so the WiFi is currently off (though it makes no difference to my issue).

I also have a Western Digital NAS that is supposed to have iTunes features built in - it says it can be useda as a media server.

Getting the things to talk to each other though is proving painful from within iTunes.

Outside of iTunes I can see the drive from my PC with no problems, connect to it, transfer files to and fro, use the web admin etc. - all fine.

Within iTunes, I see the drive listed under "Shared" as "Whitedrive" but all iTunes will do is say Loading "WhiteDrive"... and goes no further.

For the purposes of elimination, i turned off my firewall on the PC - again, same thing happens.

I know the drive works fine, as if I use the Media Server feature to connect via my TV set top box, I can browse all the shared media on the drive and play it fine, even over the WiFi, plus of course I can use it as a drive from the laptop in Windows Explorer etc.


I also wanted to share my iTunes music library with my iPhone. I have gone into the preferences for iTunes and turned on the Home Sharing. I have gone into the Music settings on the iPhone and entered my AppleID.

On the iPhone, I see the name of my shared library, and can select it. It takes about 3 minutes to "download" the library (little circle slowly filling in) but then shows no tracks listed under artists, playlists, music etc. - as if there's no music at all in the library. There are about 20'000 tracks in the library on the PC, and all play in iTunes fine. I thought initially it was because they were MP3 but I have tried converting some within iTunes to AAC - this had no effect.

I can drag-drop things from my PC Library onto the iPhone Library, and Sync, and they play that way, but I wanted to be able to use the sharing option.


Am I trying to do something with iTunes that it just doesn't support? Is this fixable? Should I be using something else?

Any help most welcome. I'm developing a bald spot.

 

[mattraehl]

Doesn't sound like you're doing anything wring with the home sharing - its just not working. It works fine for me but I only have ~2000 songs. Maybe try taking the NAS out of the picture entirely and see if that helps. If you know anyone else with an iOS device maybe you could ask them to come over and put your home sharing info on their device and see if it does the same thing or if it works. That way you could at least determine if the 3GS is the problem or not.

 

[MagicMatt]

I'm pointing the finger squarely at Apple and iTunes for this debacle. After hours and hours googling, I now have identified the causes, but no solutions.

When Apple changed to iTunes 10.3 and subsequent versions, they've changed the way that it communicates with shared data drives. This has completely screwed the iTunes functionality built into all 4 of my NAS drives. They all work fine if I downgrade to iTunes 10.2 but then the iPhone with iOS 5 doesn't get recognised properly.

The Home Sharing in iTunes 10.5.3.3 clearly has a bug. With the exact same settings, iTunes 10.5.3.2 will share the files on my PC with the iPhone fine (though not the ones on the NAS for the reason above) however updating to 10.5.3.3 immediately kills this feature dead.

Maybe the issue with Home Sharing will be solved in 10.5.3.4 as it's obviously something that only affects certain configurations. The issue with the NAS doesn't look like it will ever be fixed however, so I'm now looking to uPnP as an alternative to iTunes, with the added bonus that if I abandon iTunes I can play my music anywhere on any device, including on the TV in the kitchen or radio in the bath... this appeals greatly!

Pity iTunes doesn't seem to support uPnP. :-\