iTunes and the 'spinning beach ball' of death

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Haydn
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iTunes and the 'spinning beach ball' of death

#1 Post by Haydn » Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:58 am

I use iTunes on an iMac G5. Recently, I've updated OS X and iTunes.

Since doing this, I have frequent problems when ripping tracks from CDs - I regularly get the 'spinning beach ball' of death. When this happens, the machine just hangs and I have to re-start. It was fine until I updated the OS X and iTunes. Any suggestions, please :? ?

straycat
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Re: iTunes and the 'spinning beach ball' of death

#2 Post by straycat » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:44 pm

Haydn wrote:I use iTunes on an iMac G5. Recently, I've updated OS X and iTunes.

Since doing this, I have frequent problems when ripping tracks from CDs - I regularly get the 'spinning beach ball' of death. When this happens, the machine just hangs and I have to re-start. It was fine until I updated the OS X and iTunes. Any suggestions, please :? ?
Not wanting to be alarmist, but I had a similar issue when I upgraded to Leopard. I ended up doing a Disk First Aid on my drive, which reported it as having unfixable errors. Replaced the drive, and all was well... but there was a small amount of data loss, so a backup would be recommended.

I think the drive was already failing, but for some reason the upgrade exacerbated it, which is something I've come across more than once before. Might not be your issue, but it could be worth investigating.

Haydn
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Re: iTunes and the 'spinning beach ball' of death

#3 Post by Haydn » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:00 pm

straycat wrote:
Haydn wrote:I use iTunes on an iMac G5. Recently, I've updated OS X and iTunes.

Since doing this, I have frequent problems when ripping tracks from CDs - I regularly get the 'spinning beach ball' of death. When this happens, the machine just hangs and I have to re-start. It was fine until I updated the OS X and iTunes. Any suggestions, please :? ?
Not wanting to be alarmist, but I had a similar issue when I upgraded to Leopard. I ended up doing a Disk First Aid on my drive, which reported it as having unfixable errors. Replaced the drive, and all was well... but there was a small amount of data loss, so a backup would be recommended.

I think the drive was already failing, but for some reason the upgrade exacerbated it, which is something I've come across more than once before. Might not be your issue, but it could be worth investigating.
I haven't upgraded to Leopard, just upgraded to the latest Tiger (10.4.11). Is it safe to downgrade to the earlier version of Tiger (think it was 10.4.7)?

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Lawrence
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#4 Post by Lawrence » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:40 pm

My advice: Get a PC. I don't have any of those compatibility problems on my PC. :twisted: 8)
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Mr Awesomer
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#5 Post by Mr Awesomer » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:25 pm

They already have PCs.
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Lawrence
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#6 Post by Lawrence » Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:11 pm

No, they have personal computers. I mean the REAL PCs that 90% of the civilized world uses and enjoys, no matter what clever, witty marketing scheme they might cook up. 8)
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Mr Awesomer
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#7 Post by Mr Awesomer » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:20 am

Lawrence wrote:No, they have personal computers. I mean the REAL PCs that 90% of the civilized world uses and enjoys, no matter what clever, witty marketing scheme they might cook up. 8)
Apparently you've been living under a rock technology wise for the last two years and haven't heard about all the improvements Intel based Macs have ushered in.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html
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straycat
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Re: iTunes and the 'spinning beach ball' of death

#8 Post by straycat » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:58 am

Haydn wrote:
I haven't upgraded to Leopard, just upgraded to the latest Tiger (10.4.11). Is it safe to downgrade to the earlier version of Tiger (think it was 10.4.7)?
If it is a hard drive issue, it would need looking at anyway - I'm being a bit alarmist having been burned by that before (on both Macs and PCs)

Perhaps I have a knack for making things go wrong - I'd still maintain that a disk check would be a good idea (they can still fail, no matter what platform you're on)

Rolling back to an earlier Tiger - I honestly don't know, having never done it - didn't, in fact, know you could without a reinstall. If nothing else works, it's always worth a shot.

lipi
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#9 Post by lipi » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:24 pm

you can't roll back the os without a re-installation. you can roll back itunes, though, if you can get your hand on the older installer package. (just remove the new one from the applications folder before you run the installer.)

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trev
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#10 Post by trev » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:24 pm

I've also been having issues since I upgraded. A CD will play two tracks and then hang. Hopefully a fix will be on the way soon.

PhilShapiro
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#11 Post by PhilShapiro » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:20 pm

I used 10.4.11 for a month or so before upgrading to 10.5 last week and didn't have any problems with iTunes or otherwise. I don't have any "haxies" installed (like APE) or any downloaded iTunes plugins; these can cause problems.

I agree with straycat, run Disk Utility and check things out. In general you can't back out an OS point upgrade without doing a reinstall.

As always, backups are a Good Idea. :) Before 10.5/Time Machine I used Carbon Copy Cloner. SuperDuper! is also nice.

Haydn
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#12 Post by Haydn » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:38 pm

trev wrote:I've also been having issues since I upgraded. A CD will play two tracks and then hang. Hopefully a fix will be on the way soon.
I am using OS X 10.4.11 and iTunes 7.5, and my system hangs after playing an average of about 5 tracks. It was the same problem using 10.4.10, but fine on earlier versions of OS X and iTunes. Which versions are you using Trev?

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trev
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#13 Post by trev » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:25 pm

I'm using 10.5.1 and iTunes 7.5, so it sounds like it might be an iTunes 7.5 problem.

I'm using a 2GHz Intel Core Duo Macbook.

patrik
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#14 Post by patrik » Sat Dec 08, 2007 2:13 pm


Haydn
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Re: iTunes and the 'spinning beach ball' of death

#15 Post by Haydn » Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:26 am

straycat wrote:
Haydn wrote:I use iTunes on an iMac G5. Recently, I've updated OS X and iTunes.

Since doing this, I have frequent problems when ripping tracks from CDs - I regularly get the 'spinning beach ball' of death. When this happens, the machine just hangs and I have to re-start. It was fine until I updated the OS X and iTunes. Any suggestions, please :? ?
Not wanting to be alarmist, but I had a similar issue when I upgraded to Leopard. I ended up doing a Disk First Aid on my drive, which reported it as having unfixable errors. Replaced the drive, and all was well... but there was a small amount of data loss, so a backup would be recommended.

I think the drive was already failing, but for some reason the upgrade exacerbated it, which is something I've come across more than once before. Might not be your issue, but it could be worth investigating.
Thanks, but I won't do this just yet. I suspect it's some sort of bug with the latest iTunes and/or OS X. (As Trev has had the same problem using iTunes 7.5 and a different version of OS X, I suspect it might be a bug with iTunes 7.5). Anyway, I'm going to speak to Apple support staff at the Apple Store and see what they suggest.

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