5 minutes to import a song starting with mid iTunes 7.x releases

Question

Sometime around iTunes 7.5 or 7.6, my imports began to be excruiciatingly slow. iTunes simply stopped responding, as if it were frozen. These freeze periods typically last about 3 minutes. During these periods, CPU usage is between 75 and 100%, and RAM for the iTunes process runs at about 250 MB. When iTunes is responding normally CPU usage is low and RAM usage about 125 MB. I am running the latest version of iTunes --- 8.0.1.11.
I have no problems burning CDs, only importing them and doing some other routine file maintenancem, which I will describe later.
When importing to Windows Media Library, there is no degradation in performance. Imports are quick and run at about a 30x rate with no pauses between tracks. With iTunes, I click import and there is a 2-3 minute delay, the import to the first song starts, the drive starts spinning slowly, maybe gets up to 2x then stalls again at the end of the track. Again, another 2-3 minute wait period before the drive becomes active again. When iTunes is frozen, I cannot even minimize the application.
Some other information that may or may not be helpful:
---I have a very large library...about 41,000 items (190GB). However, when this problem started the library was still very large...about 35,000 items (160GB).
---Occassionally I have found bizarre "workarounds". In the last release of iTunes (8.0) for example, I accidentally found if I right clicked on the iTunes store link in the left pane during an import, it would generate some sort of interupt and the import would start to fly with no pauses between tracks. Sadly, this weird little glitch is now gone in 8.0.1.
---There are other performance problems that crop up when editing song info in the list (by the way, I only use list mode). Renaming songs can generate up to a 1 minute freeze-up. Deleting songs can generate an even longer freeze-up of about 2 minutes. If I open the songs in "GET INFO" mode though and advance forward and backward through the list, I can work around the file maintenance issues (though not the deleting issue).
---I have verified my registry filter settings are as Apple recommends.
---I have disabled the Bonjour service, to no avail.
---Since this happened long ago, I cannot be sure, but it's possible the problems started occuring when I installed the Samsung SH-S203N drives. Possibly some compatibility problem with the SATA controller and iTunes? The drive that originally came with the computer had no such problems....but that was running an early version of iTunes 7. So I'm not really sure if this is an iTunes or a Samsung related problem. But again...the problems are NOT limited to importing CDs only.
That's all I have. Any help would be appreciated. As a music management tool, I think iTunes is the best, but I'm at the end of my rope with these performance problems.
Message was edited by: rfgvet1

Answer 1

I hate to say that I have a worse situation than you do! I've got iTunes 8.0.1.11 on Windows XP Service Pack 3. It's fine as a playback station, but it freezes the computer when trying to import from CDs. It does this even when it's the only application running after a fresh reboot.
So to get music into iTunes on this desktop machine, I must first import on my MacBook Pro at home, then transfer to a memory stick and import folders from the memory stick. This actually takes less time than ripping with Windows Media Player, typing in identifying text for each track, and waiting for iTunes to convert the Windows audio files to AIFF or whatever.
Also, iTunes on Windows has no provision to allow a user to insert the accent marks in foreign languages. It's easy on the Mac, impossible in Windows. Why?
Why? Why?
I suspect there are device driver problems Apple doesn't want to invest in solving. iTunes will PLAY CDs on my drive. It just won't import them.