Problems with iTunes

[Firescooby]

Ok, got a 2gb Nano. I opened itunes the other day and I had a window asking to update to a newer version (can't remember what version). It's been popping up for months, but have been closing it out.

Anyway, I went ahead and updated. After updating I bought some songs off itunes and tried to sync my ipod. It had an error message (don't remember exactly what, but the songs didn't go on my ipod). Now anytime I open itunes at the top it says "Determining gapless playback information" and gets about 1/3 through and everything freezes.

What can I do? I can't backup my songs now because it freezes up and cannot do anything.

Thanks in advance.

[Firescooby]

bump bump bump

[ginette]

I think its caused my iTunes 7.0 with its firmware. Many people experienced this problem as far as I'm concern of cuz I've been reading all threads. If there's anytime you're able to open your iPod nano without freezing, backup your song immediately, and ry restoring your iPod.

For me restoring is the only way, unless you can fix it yourself. Or try the consult Apple centre, which I doubt they'll give a solution. But no harm trying though.

[jhollington]

The "Determining Gapless Playback Information..." is a function of the new version of iTunes, in order to allow it to support gapless playback. This actually has nothing directly to do with the version of the firmware (and in fact if you're using a first-generation Nano there isn't a newer firmware than the previous June release), but is rather specific to iTunes 7.

Normally it should just run through your library, but in this case it sounds like it's getting stuck somewhere along the way, possibly having problems reading a track somewhere.

Do you have your music in your iTunes library on your hard drive? If so, when you start iTunes without the iPod connected, does it go through the gapless playback scan? iTunes will actually do this twice, once on the iTunes library and once on the iPod itself. If iTunes is getting stuck scanning it's own library, then that is going to be a bit more difficult to deal with, since this means that you'll either have to revert back to iTunes 6 or you'll have to figure out which track is causing it to fail. One solution might be to reimport all of your music back into your library, but of course this will cause you to lose your ratings, playlists, and playcounts as part of that process (you can however create an alternative library with iTunes 7 by holding down the SHIFT key when starting iTunes. This would allow you to try reimporting your music without actually losing your old library).

On the other hand, if it is the iPod that it's having problems with, your best bet is to restore the iPod to factory settings and reload it from iTunes. This should get rid of any corrupt files and/or database corruption that might be causing it to fail on the iPod.

If your music is only on your iPod and not in your iTunes library, then you will need to recover the music from your iPod and then reimport it into iTunes. There are a number of solutions for this, and I'd recommend checking out the thread How to Copy songs from your iPod to your hard drive (http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=4719) and our iPod 201 article, Copying Music from iPod to Computer (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-computer/).

[Firescooby]

The problem occurs whether or not the ipod is pugged in or not. I don't have the songlist saved anywhere. Will try what you stated, is that the only way to backup the songs?

Thanks

[jhollington]

Well, as I mentioned above if it's occurring without the iPod connected then the problem is in your iTunes library itself.

If you're not too concerned about ratings, playlists, or playcounts, then you can just start over with a fresh library and reimport your music to see if that helps. I'd suggest closing iTunes, and then restarting it while holding down the SHIFT key. This will prompt you to either select or create a new library on startup. Just create a new library and reimport your music files from your hard drive into the new library to see if that helps. You can just import them directly from whatever folder they are already in.

When importing them, I'd also suggest that you go to Edit->Preferences->Advanced and turn OFF the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" option. This will prevent iTunes from copying every track into a new library directory (thus speeding up the import process and saving disk space).

By using this method, iTunes will leave your old library alone, so you can always go back to it if that doesn't help, or if there's other data you want to recover (exporting playlists for example). To switch back to the old library, just restart iTunes while holding SHIFT and select the old library directory.

[TheBigNewt]

You can just make it stop determining gapless playback information. Just close that application when it starts running in the window.

[tlparker]

Is there no way to just tell itunes you want gapless playback turned off. I have a 7000 song library and every time I start itunes it goes through the gapless playback check. It goes all the way through, then eventually (after an hour) stops with no error message. I haven't even connected my 60gb video ipod since upgrading to version 7 as I'm afraid of what'll happen. Luckily I do back up my entire drive, including music files, to an external USB drive at night (they are so cheap, I can't believe there are people who still don't back up).

Anyways, my real point/question here is, is there some place in the options where I can turn gapless off and hopefully make it stop running the check every time I start itunes? It even does this on my laptop, which only has about 100 songs on it, but it does it EVERY time. Hard to believe there's some library issue on both machines. If there's a way to turn this off, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! It's ridiculous if there isn't.