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iTunes Problem--Beachball of Doom When I Open It

udontno

udontno

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 19, 2011
321
122
VA, USA
I rarely use iTunes, but decided to fire it up today to see if I wanted to download any new music. All of my songs are on an external hard drive. I plugged it in, launched iTunes, and promptly got a swirly beach ball of doom. I had to force quit to get out of it. I then tried again, same thing. Restarted the computer. Tried again. No such luck. Ran software update, it says everything is up-to-date.

What should I do?

Early 2011 MBP running Lion
 
iTunes is a well known memory hog, with memory leakage all the time. My suggestion is to up the RAM in your Mac. Just bought a second 8Gb for $35.00 for my brand new (not a week old yet) 2.7Ghz Core i5 21.5" iMac, which now has 16Gb from Newegg (G.Skill 10600 DDR3). Bought the first 8Gb for $45.00. In total, got 16Gb from Newegg for $80.00 shipped. Can today get that same 16Gb from Newegg for $70.00 shipped. $300.00 from Apple. Do that math!

I too have my entire iTunes library externally stored on a TimeCapsule. My library is 1.93Tb large. Being that it is on a drive other than the local drive of your Mac, with everything Restart of your Mac and when you relaunch iTunes, you will have to point the Library in Preferences to the external drive. Depending on the size of your Library (like mine) this could take several minutes. I also "Keep it Organized" in total (via WiFi) it takes mine 12-15 minutes. Up your memory. It is a cheap, easy fix for the Mac's "spinning beach-ball".
 
Paradigm said:
iTunes is a well known memory hog, with memory leakage all the time. My suggestion is to up the RAM in your Mac. Just bought a second 8Gb for $35.00 for my brand new (not a week old yet) 2.7Ghz Core i5 21.5" iMac, which now has 16Gb from Newegg (G.Skill 10600 DDR3). Bought the first 8Gb for $45.00. In total, got 16Gb from Newegg for $80.00 shipped. Can today get that same 16Gb from Newegg for $70.00 shipped. $300.00 from Apple. Do that math!

I too have my entire iTunes library externally stored on a TimeCapsule. My library is 1.93Tb large. Being that it is on a drive other than the local drive of your Mac, with everything Restart of your Mac and when you relaunch iTunes, you will have to point the Library in Preferences to the external drive. Depending on the size of your Library (like mine) this could take several minutes. I also "Keep it Organized" in total (via WiFi) it takes mine 12-15 minutes. Up your memory. It is a cheap, easy fix for the Mac's "spinning beach-ball".
Click to expand...
iTunes is pointed towards the library. It opens up, shows a couple of things in my library, and continues to spin.

I really don't want to have to up the RAM on a machine that I just bought for light photo editing, word processing, a little music, and internet.
 
While I don't doubt that addition RAM would speed the machine up, the simple fact of the matter is that I shouldn't need additional RAM on a machine that I purchased in August just to open iTunes.

I saw on Apple's iTunes page that iTunes 10.5 is due out soon... I wonder if that will fix the issues I'm having.

Does ANYONE have any suggestions, besides upgrading?
 
I really disliked iTunes on my Windows machine.

I kept reading that it was so much better, so 'native', so 'seamless' on an Apple machine.



Right.....guaranteed lockup on my brand new iMac. Every time I open it. :(
 
I suggest two things

1. Try opening iTunes without your external attached. It could be having issues accessing your library.

2. The iTunes install on your computer could be bad so uninstall and then reinstall iTunes.


Also, I doubt ram has anything to do with it. I have 4gbs of ram, my entire 2tb library is on an external and iTunes runs fine for me.
 
jammingator said:
I really disliked iTunes on my Windows machine.

I kept reading that it was so much better, so 'native', so 'seamless' on an Apple machine.



Right.....guaranteed lockup on my brand new iMac. Every time I open it. :(
Click to expand...
I don't see where its so much better on the Mac, honestly.

rodman109110 said:
I suggest two things

1. Try opening iTunes without your external attached. It could be having issues accessing your library.

2. The iTunes install on your computer could be bad so uninstall and then reinstall iTunes.


Also, I doubt ram has anything to do with it. I have 4gbs of ram, my entire 2tb library is on an external and iTunes runs fine for me.
Click to expand...

I was able to open iTunes without the external and it ran fine. What I ended up having to do was move my music folder on the external over to my MacBook and import it into the library. All of my music is still on the external, but it's also on the MacBook Pro now as well... What concerns me is what if my library would have been so large that I would have been unable to move it? Then what?

How do you uninstall iTunes, just for curiosity?
 
udontno said:
I was able to open iTunes without the external and it ran fine. What I ended up having to do was move my music folder on the external over to my MacBook and import it into the library. All of my music is still on the external, but it's also on the MacBook Pro now as well... What concerns me is what if my library would have been so large that I would have been unable to move it? Then what?

How do you uninstall iTunes, just for curiosity?
Click to expand...

I've never actually had to uninstall it since I've never had a reason to but you uninstall it the way you do any program on a mac. Drag it to the trash or use an application uninstaller program like appcleaner or appdelete(which I think you have to pay for now.) I'd make sure you have the program ready to install. Since you're on Lion i'm not sure how you would get it, probably off the apple website. If you you downloaded the update to Lion from the App Store and you created an install dvd you could probably get it from there.

Since you were able to get iTunes to run without the external hooked up did you try deleting the library and then readding everything from the external? Not sure if that would help but it may be worth a try.

As your question regarding the library being to big to move, my only suggestion would be to move over some of it and have your library in two places, which is actually how my setup is. I have all my music on my MBP and all my tv shows and movies on a Drobo.
 
rodman109110 said:
I've never actually had to uninstall it since I've never had a reason to but you uninstall it the way you do any program on a mac. Drag it to the trash or use an application uninstaller program like appcleaner or appdelete(which I think you have to pay for now.) I'd make sure you have the program ready to install. Since you're on Lion i'm not sure how you would get it, probably off the apple website. If you you downloaded the update to Lion from the App Store and you created an install dvd you could probably get it from there.

Since you were able to get iTunes to run without the external hooked up did you try deleting the library and then readding everything from the external? Not sure if that would help but it may be worth a try.

As your question regarding the library being to big to move, my only suggestion would be to move over some of it and have your library in two places, which is actually how my setup is. I have all my music on my MBP and all my tv shows and movies on a Drobo.
Click to expand...
I asked how to uninstall it because I dragged it to the trash, then I got a message saying that I couldn't delete it because it is required by the OS. However, I was able to download iTunes and install it from Apple's website.

I haven't tried to get the library to read off the external again. I've been too elated at the fact that I have my stuff back. I don't know why it wouldn't read off the external, but would all work when everything is on my laptop's hard drive.
 
rodman109110 said:
Drag it to the trash or use an application uninstaller program like appcleaner or appdelete(which I think you have to pay for now.)
Click to expand...
In most cases, app removal software like AppCleaner or App Delete doesn't do a thorough job of finding and removing files/folders related to deleted apps. For more information, read this.
udontno said:
What should I do?
Click to expand...
It sounds like an issue with your external drive. Do you have that drive backed up to another drive, in case it fails? You should, especially if that's the only place where your music library exists.
Paradigm said:
My suggestion is to up the RAM in your Mac.
Click to expand...
You made that RAM recommendation without even knowing how much RAM the OP already had installed. RAM is not the issue and increasing RAM will not help with problems accessing an external drive.
Paradigm said:
when you relaunch iTunes, you will have to point the Library in Preferences to the external drive. Depending on the size of your Library (like mine) this could take several minutes.
Click to expand...
There's something wrong if it takes several minutes. My library won't fit on my internal drive, so I have it split between internal and external. Launching iTunes and having the library fully available takes about 10 seconds, and that's with the external drive connected to another Mac and accessing it across the wireless network. It should never take even a minute.
 
Last edited:
Download latest itunes. Install.

Verify external harddrive.
Verify / repair internal harddrive and repair permissions.

Let me guess, you are using a cheap USB drive that you got on sale?

I've never had a problem with iTunes. Even when in 2005 my library size is 200GB on an external drive. I use firewire.
 
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