iTunes Problems

Posted by: Dignan

iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 01:47

Okay, so some of you probably wouldn't expect me to use an Apple product, but I have to say I really found the iTunes program appealing as a music manager. And this is despite what I would have thought was an equal dislike for managers in the first place, particularly ones that operate in a soup fashion.

Regardless, I may have to discontinue my use of it, because it's causing some problems on my system.

So, I had it open today and I inserted a music CD into my system. I had no plans to have iTunes either rip it or even play it. I was going to rip it in EAC. That didn't matter, because most of my machine froze up, Windows couldn't finish opening the disc, and most tasks stopped responding. So I tried to close iTunes [by ending the task]. No luck. I couldn't close it. It just hung and wouldn't close out. I tried closing it in the other system processes program I like (Process Explorer), which usually has better luck. No dice. I couldn't even shut down the system because Windows couldn't close iTunes.

So after a hard reset, I tried something else. I tried simply opening and closing iTunes from a fresh boot. Same thing happend. It wouldn't close.

This is quite frustrating. I don't want to have to restart my system every time I've had iTunes open and I want to put a CD in.

The other problem I've had is that Apple has made all these other services run on my machine. The less confusing is "iTunesHelper", but I'd still like to know what it does. The other is "iPodServices". Why the hell would it make this run all the time, when I don't have a damn iPod? Why would it assume that? I'd go into iTunes and check on whether that can be disabled, but, God forbid, I need to burn a CD in a bit.

Other than all this, I think it's a nice program.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 02:38

This doesn't help your problem with iTunes, but if anyone else has trouble killing a process under Windows 2000 or XP, I discovered a marvelous command-line utility out there called "PSKILL" which is like the Linux "kill" command and it works like a charm. Stuff that Task Manager wouldn't kill, or would at least waste time with diplomacy first, this thing kills instantly. Have a google for it.
Posted by: mtempsch

Re: iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 05:37

pskill is just one of a whole range of neat utilities from Sysinternals.
RegMon, FileMon, ProcessExplorer etc. belong to the first things I install on Windows computer, right after the Cygwin stuff...
Posted by: Dignan

Re: iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 10:19

Do you think pskill is any better than Process Explorer?
Posted by: mtempsch

Re: iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 10:34

Depends on what I want to do... Just to kill off a process PE is a bit overkill...
Posted by: tfabris

Re: iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 15:33

Yeah, Process Explorer is a great tool, but if there's a task I want stopped, it's nice to be able to do it really fast: Press Ctrl+Esc, R, PSKILL <processname>, Enter.
Posted by: Dignan

Re: iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 16:25

Good to know. Too bad Process Explorer isn't even able to kill iTunes when it hangs on my system...
Posted by: tfabris

Re: iTunes Problems - 02/10/2004 16:36

Right, so try PSkill and see if that does it for you.

Doesn't solve the problem of why itunes is crashing, but...