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john_satc

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 14, 2005
398
0
B'ham Uk
Often when I use iTunes, it freezes and won't do anything - I just get the beachball. After waiting for that to stop for what seems like forever, I try force quit and this has no effect. What should I do then to close iTunes?? I try logging out but that just completley crashes the whole comp - there just doesn't seem to by a way to do it. Ideas please?!??!??
 
I've only had to do this once, and I'm not sure it's a great idea, but unplug your iBook and drop the battery. It'll restart. Have you gone to Disk Utility and ran Repair Permissions? This is a easy fix for keeping things in order on your iBook.
 
Are you using Force Quit from dock or cmd-option-escape (aka apple-alt-escape) to bring up the Force Quit Applications window? The latter often works better for me (when we're talking about iTunes).

Also, when is it iTunes freezes? Mine behaves really good, except when I try importing a seriously damaged CD. When the import hits the scratch, iTunes just stops reacting (music plays on but it beachballs and doesn't respond to anything except a force quit). The rest of the system is not affected at all... :) Edit: But Log out/Restart/Shut down will not work since the system doesn't get to quit iTunes...
 
Command-option-escape is the best way. It even works for full screen programs that have crashed.

Another option is Activity Monitor in /Applications/Utilities. It will show a list of all running programs and there is a Stop button you can use to end them.
 
Yeah iTunes usually crashes when importing a bad CD, but it has happend at least once when not importing.
I tried that Activity monitor thing to close 'iTunes helper' whatever that it is so I could delete then re install iTunes again, and it worked great. I will use that in future.
So far no crash with iTunes since this post, but next time I will try the activity monitor way. I normally option click iTUnes and choose force quit, and then if no diffrence is noticed, i choose the keyboard way.
Oh and permissions - I run them yeah, takes 1 min as i only have 5gigs used on my iBook harddrive.
 
Sorry to bump this but... every day now I get something crash - this is worst than my windows pc!

Usually its iTunes, but sometime Finder crashes, and yesterday applescript crashed - first time I have ever used it. I am fed up of having to force shut down - this should not be happening! What am i doing wrong?
 
Not sure if this will work, but have you tried trashing the iTunes plist?
This works for OSX software I've tried it with. (never had any problems with iTunes though, knock on wood)
Maybe you have a corrupted audio file or catalog in your iTunes library.
 
word crashing

The only problem i've had this with has been Word (which the record for me was 4 crashes in a row, which made me miss the first 10 minutes of lecture (i was taking notes in a class)). iTunes has been pretty good, but it does slow down occasionally. I didn't know there was a way to bring up the force quit screen (i'm a recent switcher, learning all the tricks again).
 
snickelfritz said:
Not sure if this will work, but have you tried trashing the iTunes plist?
This works for OSX software I've tried it with. (never had any problems with iTunes though, knock on wood)
Maybe you have a corrupted audio file or catalog in your iTunes library.

I will try this once i next restart as itunes again just crashed.

I use an external hard drive with all my music on, could that be a problem? Usually it just kicks into action fine, but sometimes it plays up.
 
I am rather impatient when it comes to hung applications. If the usual cmd-opt-esc doesn't work within the first two tries I head to terminal and type:

kill -9 <pid>

This seems to work nicely for me. <pid> is the process ID that can be gotten from the 'top' command. The -9 switch indicates it is a non-ignorable kill.
 
I've had this problem myself after intalling Tiger. i would start up itunes, but it would never really start up, just say the process was running and force quit wouldn't shut it down. It seemed to happen whenever the permissions on /Library were set wrong, so fixing permissions fixed it. The only way I found was to do a forced reset (holding the powerbutton down for a few seconds).

iTunes was the only thing that crashed without allowing force quit to kill it. I even went to the command line and typed in the unix command to force kill the process, but that didn't kill iTunes.

Anyway, there is an update out, so hopefully it won't do it again.
 
I am at despair.

I trashed the preferences, hoping things would be okay. I am running 4.8.

But just now, I tried to transfer songs to my iPod and it crashes again! I am so Pi**ed at the moment, I am having a bad day today (made worse by Fri 13) things just arn't going right, and the one thing that I think will work fine as Apple loves to say, is not!

I don't know if it is Tiger that is the problem, or my external hard drive 'cos I started usuing both at the same time.

At the moment I am fed up, hugely annoyed and just want the ground to open up and swallow me in - made worse by the fact that I can't even listen to my music!!!!
 
Poeben said:
I am rather impatient when it comes to hung applications. If the usual cmd-opt-esc doesn't work within the first two tries I head to terminal and type:

kill -9 <pid>

This seems to work nicely for me. <pid> is the process ID that can be gotten from the 'top' command. The -9 switch indicates it is a non-ignorable kill.

How does this work?
I have the process ID but it won't work - here is what i type in terminal

kill -9 <440>

and nothing! is there meant to be spaces?
 
If I'm at work, I cuss out the computer in my head, less the PC zealots around me know that an app crashed on my beloved iMac that I had to buy with my own money because I refuse to work on a PC (yeah, I'm a tard, I know).

If I'm at home, it's usually iPhoto, and my whole condo can usually hear me yell "Mother effer - not again!!!!!!!!!!!"
 
john_satc said:
How does this work?
I have the process ID but it won't work - here is what i type in terminal

kill -9 <440>

and nothing! is there meant to be spaces?

don't use the angle brackets. try

kill -9 440
 
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