iTunes desperately slow?
 

On my laptop (win XP pro SP2, 1gb ram, 1.86ghz Pentium M), iTunes is horrifficaly slow. Literally, it lags for 5 to 10 seconds when I try to scroll my library. If another window covers it, you have to wait for as much as 30 seconds for it to refresh its display when you move the covering window.

I just assumed that the windows version is a dog, but yesterday I used it on a friend's desktop (which my lappy out-specs significantly) and it was quick and nimble-feeling.

What's the deal? I've tried installing the one that was new yesterday, no help.

When's the last time you did a complete computer scan for spyware and such? I know that iTunes likes to run three or four different things at the same time, and if it's having to compete with any other system processes then it's going to be bogged down.

Of course, there is the other problem of YOU'RE USING iTUNES! Winamp is free dude :D

I'm running much much less than you.. 512MB 2.4Ghz

and it's slow, but not that slow.

I use and love Winamp. I'm toying with replacing my podcatcher with the podcast downloading functions in iTunes. And it just PISSES ME OFF that it's so miserably slow, even if I never really intend to use it.

I haven't done a spyware scan in quite a while. This would be the only symptom. I'll send send Adaware hunting overnight tonight and see what it turns up.

Adaware?

Windows Defender is your friend. here

SO sayeth Martel, who works fixing computers and is really good at it, so I guess he knows what he's talking about :D

Good, thanks. I so rarely have to deal with this shit, I don't know the best tools.

Sadly, Windows Defender gives me a clean bill of health on a "quick scan". I'll run a full scan later and see.

Could it have something to do with the way iTunes renders itself? I've got some sort of ATI Mobile video chipset, but I don't think it's a high-grunt video subsystem.

iTunes for MS Windows is slow.

You failed to state what version of iTunes you're using. They do make regular changes in the UI...
Is your library particularly large?

Yeah, but this is like unusably slow. It just took 20 seconds to open so I could answer:

iTunes 7, the brand new one (widely recognized to be buggy, though the slowness predated my upgrade).

I don't think my library is particularly large. 3542 items. Now, they're on a network share. But that shouldn't slow down browsing the library, should it?

Well, iTunes loads an index for the entire library into memory on startup so... startup is particularly slow for iTunes. This will be aggravated by the fact that your library is on a remote volume (across a network)...


If you're just looking through the library items, no, the network share shouldn't affect this. iTunes does not use GDI for painting. Do you find any other applications similarly slow? I take it Winamp works fine? How about Windows Media Player? And all these iTunes problems predates your upgrade to version 7? Does changing the window size make any difference?

Your problem does sound rather anomalous...

This it the only app that doggs this way, including other media apps. The problem pre-existed my iTunes 7 upgrade. Changing the window size doesn't seem to do anything.

I opened it and let it sit there for a while to see if there were startup-related db caching things slowing me down. It sat on my desktop for half an hour, and was as bad after that as it is in the beginning.

I'm thinking about uninstalling and reinstalling. Thoughts?

It's funny you mentioned other media apps because that wasn't the similarity I was looking for with the applications I was listing. Besides being all media apps (which I didn't even notice), they all use DirectX for drawing and not GDI, like normal, everyday, sane Windows applications...

As I said, it does nothing dynamically and, instead, loads the entire library index into memory on startup. There's nothing to cache since the library, itself, is pretty much "a cache." Startup is slow and there's nothing that can be done about that. In your case, having the library on a local store might make it faster...

It won't hurt to try this. I'm surprised you haven't tried it, already...

Yeah. I've been lazy.

Here's what I tried last night. I have a desktop machine I mostly use as a BitTorrent head. It's slower than my laptop, but connected by wire rather than wireless. I set up iTunes 7 on that, imported the same network share (off a dedicated fileserver) into my library. It was slightly poky, but very useable. About as fast as I've seen iTunes on other machines.

I shared my library from that machine and browsed it from my laptop. The shared "version" of the library doesn't have ANY of the slowness I'm seeing. It scrolls and navigates like a champ!

When I go back to my local version of the library and pull up the "quick navigate" thing--those three scroll panels at the top for genre, artist, and album, THOSE scroll and navigate super quick. But when I select one--triggering a change in the main library window--it takes forever, just like scrolling or type-navigating the main library window does.

So I think it has more to do with the local library than with the application itself. Maybe I'll try deleting everything from my library and re-importing the music off my network share.

http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/53028.html

Apple's latest release of its iTunes player has some users up in arms over bugs in the software. A feature dubbed "gapless playback," which eliminates pauses between two consecutive songs on an album, is being held responsible for most of the problems. "Anyone who has not yet downloaded iTunes 7, I strongly advise you to wait until the bugs are worked out," recommended one user.

and another
http://www.techspot.com/news/22888-i...headaches.html

iTunes 7 bugs causing headaches?
Is iTunes 7 not all that Apple's cracked it up to be? As it starts to be rolled out to the huge number of ITMS subscribers out there, it seems that a huge number of them are complaining about rampant bugs. Many are urging other users to avoid updating because of the issues, which range from distorted sound and excessive CPU usage, leading to system slowdown. Unfortunately, it may be a long time in fixing – it seems the problem does not plague all users, and affects more Windows than Mac users. Other reports include information about certain hardware not being recognized and random crashes. There's a discussion about the problem, including a few temporary fixes, such as disabling the sound enhanced, that may help some users.

Exactly how Cynthetiq put it.

iTunes 7 does have this weird gapless playback thing, but it only runs whenever you first put songs into your library (or when you first open the newly downloaded/installed iTunes, and with a sizable library, 3000+, it'll take 30 minutes to run completely, plus, you can turn it off.) Also, any bugs with the system - distorted sound and rampant CPU usage - seem to be whenever your computer is running video from an outside iTunes location... although, I could play Starcraft and listen to tunes without a problem.

iTunes (6) definitely starts to screw up too just by being on your computer for a long time... I've started to notice some very minor problems creep into it. But I can't really imagine what on earth is happening to yours. Guesses: If it still acts up, hit ctrl-alt-del whenever you're running it and using it, and see if any processes jump up all crazy like. You could have a very fragmented hard drive, too. That'll really slow down the process of finding a song, especially with iTunes.

i was looking about Wired.com and found this....

Oh finally. I can go back to using Party Shuffle now instead of the randomizing my list in Winamp!