iTunes Rainbow Colour Wheel

[00rish]

Hi everyone,

First time posting... not getting anywhere on the official Apple discussion forums.

Anyway, I've owned an iMac since July 08. I LOVE it and this is my first experience with an apple product. That being said I had CONSISTENTLY had major issues working in iTunes wherein for random reasons when I'm working in it -- whether it be playing music, playing a video, editing INFO, or deleting files, I get the rainbow colour wheel which crashes my entire system.

What do I mean by "crash". Well first the colour wheel spins within the iTunes window, but I am unable to access the FORCE QUIT window or quit anything. I get about 15-20 more seconds within finder before the entire OS locks up.

I've had this issue since Leopard and it persists now when I have Snow Leopard and the latest itunes. I am really at my wits end because this is the ONLY software that I have this problem on but it is recurring although the causes are not obvious or repeatable.

I used to have Mcafee Virusscan and this would cause issues outside of iTunes but that has been gone for some time. I dont use iTunes frequently, but I do want to start organizing and compressing my music collection. It is very irritating to open and quit iTunes every 5 mins to ensure no errors occur but there HAS to be something at the back end causing this.

I have run numerous REPAIR DISKS and PERMISSIONS so it's not that. Ihave also completed deleted and re-added my music back into iTunes more times than I can count.

I have also attached my ACTIVITY MONITOR screenshot in case any of you have familiarity with something that I am running which is doing this. It occurs whether or not I have an iPod/iPhone connected, and regardless of the number of applications running.

Any ideas what-so-ever? The hypothesis I'm at right now, is that the XML file and Library are slow to update so when trying to change too much it gets bogged down and locks up, but I have nothing to prove this.

It may be possible that I have some corrupt music, but with 7000+ songs, I am not about to add them back 1 by 1 and try to crash my system.

Thanks everyone, and sorry for the pitiful whining, but I've reached the end of hte internet and have tried everything. Seems like no one has the same issues as me

 

[Mike Macintosh]

I think its time you reinstall the OS, if that doesn't work take it into Apple personally, that is if you bought Applecare for your machine within the first year of actually owning it.

 

[00rish]

already been to apple store...

thanks Mike

Although I haven't reinstalled Snow Leopard yet, I did try this numerous times when I had Leopard and the problem first surfaced. I also took it to the Apple Store within the first year warranty. Although they ran a million tests on it, everything came up fine on the individual component by component diagnostics and I got a free 1 TB hard drive out of it.

One thing that I haven't fully tried yet, is trying to crash a different iTunes library... what i mean is that my gf also has iTunes on her account and I don't think she has had issues.. that being said, she also has done 0 editing on her library.

I think the next step is to once again recreate my account on the iMac and go from there. Although I have TimeMachine, it will be cumbersome to grab all the files back if I do a full OS reinstall.

 

[alienapp]

have tried reinstalling your itunes?

one more thing, by any chance would you have subscribed to a lot of podcasts? Because it is a known issue that if itunes check to many podcast at once itunes would freeze. If this is the case you may consider removing some subscription or set the podcast so that it updates manually.

 

[00rish]

premissions repair

yes sir
i do that about once per week anyway. so yes I have done that alot.

I should note that when I did the repair, I did have a logic board replaced.

It is odd that this ONLY happens with iTunes, but can happy regardless of what I am doing. It's happened when trying to
- open iTunes right after bootup
- close iTunes
- while playing music
- while playing video
- while trying to access the INFO for a song
- while adding songs to playlists
- while deleting songs
etc etc.

Problem is that I can't define when it will happen.... :S
I should say, that I spent about 3 hours last night recreating a 500 song playlist. It took me so long as I had to FORCE RESTART (ie hold down power button to shut off), about 30+ times over the process.

Cheers

 

[GGJstudios]

Have you tried creating a new user account and setting up a new iTunes library there? You could import your music to the new library and see if you can re-create the problem.

By the way, on a very minor point, the "rainbow colour wheel" is usually referred to as a beachball and when it appears the app is said to be "beachballing".

Also, when using Activity Monitor, it's helpful to change the view from "My Processes" to "All Processes", to see everything running on your system.