iTunes hates me. The feeling is mutual.

April 30, 2010 1:39 PM

Why does iTunes hate me? Not me specifically, but my iMac G4? Twice in the past month, I have had to wait as my entire iTunes library loads, as if it is loading for the very first time. iMac G4, 1GHz, 1.5Ghz SDRAM, OS 10.5.8. iTunes 9.1.1 just installed. 235Gb music files on 750Gb USB external drive. The "loading iTunes library" becomes a two to three day affair.

I would blame it on the update to 9.1.1, but I have another iMac, also PowerPC, with a similar set up (different location, so no, I can't just swap one for the other) and it has never had this problem.

A self-styled Mac-expert friend (who sold me the iMac G4) told me my problem is that this machine can't run 10.5.8. I resist this solution.

Is there something I'm missing? If I want to maintain compatibility with last.fm (a medium concern) is there another music library player I can easily switch to? I'll gladly suffer ONE MORE three day library load if it ends the problem.

posted by beelzbubba to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

There are a lot of issues that could cause this - and troubleshooting a problem like this often requires a back-and-forth conversation - but read this and make sure you followed the instructions for moving your iTunes library to an external drive and if you don't get a good answer here or need to have a big conversation about it, try posting your question to the Apple support forums.
posted by jardinier at 1:54 PM on April 30, 2010

Best answer: As it appears to have just started happening to your system recently with perhaps after the 9.1.1 iTunes update, my guess is your the iTunes database is got munged somehow. I would try rebuilding the database.
posted by birdherder at 2:02 PM on April 30, 2010

Response by poster: re: moving to an external drive--that was at least three years ago. Rebuilding the database is ringing some bells. Will try that & report back.
posted by beelzbubba at 2:31 PM on April 30, 2010

Best answer: 9.1.1 did something to update the iTunes library and took a long time to process then load on my iMac (only two years old but with a large library). Can't explain the previous time unless there had been a crash of iTunes prior to that.
posted by kimota at 3:18 PM on April 30, 2010

I'd go into your music folder>iTunes, backup (just copy and paste into another folder) any file in the root iTunes folder that starts with "iTunes" like iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Library.xml, iTunes Music Library.xml, etc... They should have a very small total size.

This way next time iTunes rebuilds (for days!), close iTunes, and copy and paste these files back into your music folder and (hopefully) it will take you back to the point when you originally backed up.
posted by glenno86 at 7:02 AM on May 2, 2010

Response by poster: I'd like to add a resolved tag to this, but unless and until iTunes stops making automatic changes to where my iTunes app is stored, I will never feel resolved about this. The reason I had to rebuild my database is because both of the recent updates to iTunes (9.0.1 & 9.1.1) located my iTunes app onto my Mac's HD instead of where I want it, on an external--where it has happily resided for over two years. Just ask me, ok, Apple devs? Is that too much? If you don't find any trace of iTunes on the main drive, just ask me where you should put it. Don't assume. Because, well, you know what happens when you assume, right?
posted by beelzbubba at 2:39 PM on May 31, 2010