Crazy iTunes Mess

Hello Apple Community,
I need someone's help!
I've been trying to fix my iPhone 4S for hours and up to this point I don't know what to do anymore.
It all started yesterday, iCloud kept popping up requesting me to put in my password; the same thing happened with updates (which is weird because my apps update automatically).
I tried to submit my password a couple of times but it didn't work (I did not forget my password). Confused about the situation, I decided that it was no big deal, and I decided to change the password...That's when everything went crazy.
1- my phone number appeared gray on iMessage and Facetime, neither was clickable/selectable
2- After restoring every restorable feature on the iPhone, my phone number was completely gone from both iMessage and Facetime.
3-Everytime I go on iTunes from my computer (to restore iPhone, etc.) it doesn't work unless I put my old password in it. Pretty much I'm stuck between two passwords, my iTunes works well on my phone and computer with my new password, but when I try to restore my phone, it only works with my old password; It sounds very illogical, but it's just the way way it is.
4- Now, when I go to iTunes, my iPhone's phone number appears as N/A
5-When I turn off/on iMessage I get a notification stating, "An error occured during activation. Try again"
Someone please help me I have no idea what to do anymore.

I too have this problem.
My solution is to quit iTunes and open DISK UTILITY and REPAIR PERMISSIONS on the disk, then re-open iTunes.
It's strange because even though no permissions are shown as actually repaired in the report, it fixes the problem.
For me, just quitting iTunes and then re-opening it doesn't fix the problem.
This fix is only good once per session for me as I shutdown overnight.

Similar Messages

AppleID, MobileMe, iCloud, iTunes mess

Can apple fix the appleID mess it's created?
I suspect almost everyone has this problem.
iTunes was created first. When you set up a new iTunes account, it creates an appleid using the email address provided. So far, so good.
Then came MobileMe. Create a new MobileMe account and a new appleid was created. You had to use the MobileMe provided [email protected] email address. This was the default so you couldn't use the same email that you used when creating your iTunes account. Now you have two appleid's and two different emails, one for each appleid.
Now comes iCloud. Fortunately, Apple seems to have migrated from MobileMe to iCould without creating yet another appleid. That's an improvement. Now, everyone has two appleids, but at least it's not three.
Heres the problem. When you try to set up iMessage on your iPhone, iPad or iPod you are most likely going to have a problem.
An email adddress can only be associated with one appleid. It's a hard one-to-one relationship in the apple database. Should I use my itunes appleid or my icloud appleid? What's a person to do? Ah, the humanity!
If you have associated any email addresses with either of your appleids, then there are going to be more conflicts and you won't have visibility to them.
Here's and example.
Assume iTunes account uses email #1, most likely NOT @me.com because me.com didn't exist when you set up iTunes.
Assume iCloud account uses email #2, most likely an @me.com because that was required with MobileMe.
Assume you have a personal or work address, email #3 let's call it @yahoo.com. This could also be a work domain, @yahoo.com email or @gmail.com email.
Assume you assigned email #3 to one of your appleid's as an alternative email address. You probably did this because it's obvious on the applieid form and it's a good idea to have an alternative email for accounts like iTunes, MobileMe and iTunes because they ding your credit card.
Let's say you want your friends to iMessage you at [email protected]. You want this because you want your friends to reach you at email address #3. You also don't want to give out an email address that is associated with a paid, credit card account, like iTunes and iCloud. So, you login to iMessage with appleid #1. Then you add email #3, your personal email that you share with your friends. You want your friends to use your personal, email #3.
iMessage barks, "You can't use this email because it's already being used."
It would be nice if iMessage would tell you a like more. Like, which appleid is in play. Or what you need to do to resolve this. Or where you need to go. Sadly, this is not the case. iMessage would have been equally as helpful by saying, "You're an idiot. You're not smart enough to use iMessage."
Of course, no one logs into appleid.apple.com regularly. I completely forgot that appleid.apple.com exists. The UI's for customers are iTunes, MobileMe and now iCloud.
To resolve this, you need to do the following.
1. Remember that appleid.apple.com is the place to go to manage applieid. I don't have space in my brain for this since I never use it and these accounts are actually created on iTunes, MobileMe and iCould, not on appleid.apple.com.
2. Login into both applieid accounts and look at the emails associated with each.
3. Think about how you want to fix this.
4. Think about which applieid you want to use for iMessage, your iTunes one or your iCloud one.
5. Wonder about the implications of #4. If I use iCloud for iMessage, can I still buy things in iTunes with my other apple id? If I use iTunes, will my iMessages get to me? Does iMessage need the iCloud apple id? How the heck did I get two appleid's anyway?
6. Develop a plan for moving your email addresses around between both appleid's to resolve any conflicts with iMessage. You must consider which email you want to give to friends and which you want to keep "secret" for security reasons.
7. Make the changes by removed emails, adding emails, re-verifiying emails, etc.
8. Make changes to iMessage, on every device. For me, this is four devices - iphone 3gs, iphone 4, ipad 1, ipad 2.
9. Test and hopefully it works now.
In my case, I figured it out and got everything working after a few failures.
I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I am a tech entrepreneur and I'm a long time user of all apple products. This mess stumped me for a while. I can't imagine new apple users my wife or my parents have a chance in **** in figuring this out on their own.
How many calls are coming into Apple Care about this issue?
"iMessage doesn't work!"
"iMessage rejected me!"
"iMessage hates my email address!"
"iMessage is forcing me to give out my secure iTunes email to all my friends!"
Hey Apple, I recommend you take a hard look at the appleID message process as it relates to id and email address management.
Create a universal appleid for God's sake. It will be painful to merge, but much more painful if you don't. It will be devastating if you continue creating new appleid's for every new product. Users will run out of email addresses and they will lose their minds trying to connect all your great products that they can't use.
If Steve was still here, someone would be fired. You can do better than this.
My 2 cents.

Yes, it's 2014 and my Apple ID situation is beyond ridiculous. I have a computer science degree and this has had me stuck for months. THe best I've come up with is a seriously snafu'ed workaround that doesn't always work.
Just got a new iPhone 5S (thank you, Apple, for dropping new 4S to only 8 mg so it's completely unusable) and all my apps won't update, my Apple Id - either the new or the old - are completely unrecognized anywhere. I've added, changed passwords, logged out, deauthorized until I'm blue in the face.
APPLE ARE YOU LISTENING????????????? THis is a complete CLUSTER and you should be ashamed of yourselves. No doubt, Steve is rolling over in his grave. You've completely lost sight of his amazing vision.
Just so you know, I've escalated this to the highest level of Apple support and guess what the guy told me - "I've never heard of this problem". Wth?
On top of all the Apple ID insanity, someone else used my email address and created an Apple ID with it. The tech guys never did figure out how to fix it and their sage advice? Abandon both the Apple ID and email address (which I've had since the year 2000)!!!!!! Seriously????
So let's recap - the Apple ID situation is completely unworkable and Apple software allows two people to create Apple ID's using the same email??? I've written code - this is simple. Are you listening, Apple???? CHECK FOR EXISTING EMAILS...
Well, folks... there you have it. A once great company going straight down the tubes. I'm finding ANYONE but Apple to get my devices from in the future.

Itunes messing up my music files on my computer

I am sure that these questions are probably answered somewhere in this post so I apologize.
I have all my music on my hard drive in named folders for each artist, with named sub-folders with named songs for each CD/album.
1. How do I keep iTunes from messing up these files on my hard drive?
2. How can I import the folders into Itunes keeping the same setup as on the hard drive? When I import the folders, Itunes seperates some of the files into different places in the Itunes library
3. How do i prevent iTunes from creating duplicate files of the songs/folders when importing them?
4. When importing some folders, they seem to import but I cannot find them in the iTunes library?
Thanks for any help provided!
GateWay Windows XP

ITunes messed up - how to restore iPod to iTunes?

My father has asked for some help. He has an iPod, which was correctly sync'd to his iTunes on his Windows XP computer.
However, some 'expert' came and messed with his computer. Now, his music is spread over a couple of folders, and the iTunes appears to have some duplicates. (His iTunes also no longer plays any music, but that can wait until we've resolved the first problem.)
I'd like to help him completely clean up the mess and restore iTunes to a pristine condition, correctly sync'd with his iPod. I had a good look at his computer, but as I don't have iTunes or an iPod, I don't know what to do next!
How can he...
1. Wipe out everything from his iTunes (and from the folders) on the computer, and then:
2. Restore his entire iPod into his iTunes on the computer to the correct iTunes folder, and:
3. Correctly get the automatic sync working again?
Obviously, I will back up the music that is already on his computer first, just in case!
As an extra note, his iPod is currently set up completely correctly, as he wants it, so at this point he doesn't want any changes to the iPod. He only wants his iTunes to work again.
Thank you to anyone who can offer advice.

All you can do is to restore and thus erase the iPod unless you can get a data recovery company to preserve the data.
Place the iOS device in Recovery Mode and then connect to your computer and restore via iTunes. The iPod will be erased.
iOS: Wrong passcode results in red disabled screen
If recovery mode does not work try DFU mode.
How to put iPod touch / iPhone into DFU mode « Karthik's scribblings

ITunes messed up my library...what happened?

Ok so I finally downloaded the newest version of iTunes the other day. Here's the problem...after it went thru the whole installation process and re-launched, my library was messed up because somehow everything got auto-tagged and most of it is wrong. Some of my albums have been duplicated and half of my songs are in one album and the other half are in the other. If you right click on one of the albums and choose "Get Info," all of the info for both albums is the same...its just that some of the ID tags were modified (capital letters, track numbers, etc.). A lot of artist names have been replaced with "Various," "Soundtrack," "Unknown Artist," and some are even in foreign languages. Does anyone know how to fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance....

kind of the same problem. A song from an album apeared faaaaar from the rest of the songs, and I've come to a pretty dumb issue:
When I order "Album by Artist" the songs of the multiple disc albums mix up. i.e.:
any two disc album: shows the track 1 of both discs together, then track 2 for both discs, etc. etc.
Was not like this in the previous versions of iTunes (and I've been using iTunes for like 3 years, gettin' VERY update.
This, plus the registry error on some windows plataforms, calls for a *MOST URGENT PATCH UPDATE!!!*
got a really fast "kind of" response.
9.0.1 update says that some scrambling issues has been solved. Downloading right now,... we'll see.
Message was edited by: Bagheera.Sk8

New iTunes messed up my library.

My library was very nicely organized by "Album Artist", and albums of the same artist were grouped together. Now it is a total mess and I cannot change "Album Artist" tag. Help!

Perhaps try Chargedneuron's suggestion with that:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12758546#12758546
But if no joy there, and if you aren't using iTunes 10.1.1.4 yet, try updating to that. (The Mac release notes say a problem with similar symptoms to yours was fixed in the 10.1.1.4 version.)

ITunes Mess

My iTunes is locking up constantly. Is this related to iTunes 11? What a mess. It doesn't matter what area I am in, such as store or library, or anywhere. It just locks up and says not responding. Any suggestions?

It's difficult to offer advice when you don't include much in the way of detail. It will help if you'll tell us what operating system your computer is running, which specific version of iTunes you have, and what you've tried, if anything (such as restarting your computer) to try and fix the problem. Then people will be a better position to make a diagnosis and offer suggestions.
Regards.

ITunes messes up sound

Yesterday, I got myself am ASUS 22" LCD screen, to plug into my laptop. I have to use the VGA input for it, because the docking station I recently got doesn't allow my graphics card to detect the monitor. This was a problem because my games would either crash on startup or wouldn't work properly.
Anyway, the screen is now hooked up to my laptop directly, though I still use the dock as a USB hub. I've connected my monitor's speakers to the dock.
The problem I'm having is that, after having iTunes 10 open for a few minutes, my speakers' sound gets distorted. It affects everything, ranging from the music in my iTunes library, to Youtube videos, and even the sound test for my speakers.
Basically, if you've seen Star Wars Episode VI, normal voices sound like this droid: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/EVsupervisordroid
The minute I close iTunes, everything goes back to normal. I figure this must be, in part, due to the new monitor, but I find it odd that iTunes is the one messing it up.
Any ideas?

Yes, you can purchase the extended AppleCare plan at any time within one year of your purchase of the Mac. Don't wait until the last minute, though.
No, I don't think AppleCare techs have enough time on their hands to sift through all your files, though I suppose they could if you sent them everything. If you're concerned about your privacy, back your Home folder up to another hard drive, then delete the home folder's contents from the machine before sending it in for work. Or clone the entire hard drive to another drive, verify that the clone is bootable, and perform an Erase & Install of the original software that came with the machine before sending it in. Neither of these methods will prevent a really determined snooper from recovering erased files off the machine, but the chances that anyone at AppleCare is that interested in what's on your hard drive are very, very small indeed.

Just plain CRAZY iTunes behavior

This is a request for insight as to what might be going on. I've searched & searched for a solution but don't expect one until Apple provides some sort of library/database repair function.
-> After defragmenting the hard drive with my iTunes folder on it, iTunes thinks that roughly 20% of my music is linked to random files on the startup drive (different from the music folder drive). Crazy random file types are listed in the "Where" section of the "Summary" tab in the song's info. tiff, htm, do, iges, you name it.
And, of course, now iTunes dutifully gives me hundreds of errors (thankfully grouped into one dialog box) every time I synch an iPod, alerting me that it won't copy the odd files to my iPod because the iPod can't play iges and htm files.
I rebuilt the current library from scratch about a month ago and have recently re-imported the whole music folder (by dropping the iTunes music folder from the Finder onto the iTunes application window) to retrieve all the real music files that iTunes miss-linked. This resulted in about 1000 "duplicate" files but at least the music is in there for iPod use. Now I'm going through manually and deleting the miss-linked files after transferring my star ratings. *good times*
-> So there it is. Any ideas as to what's behind this craziness?
-> Any other votes for an Apple iTunes database repair tool?
-> And is there anyone else out there who shuns iPhoto because of what would happen if it's single gigantic photo database has even half the problems that the little iTunes library has?

I notice that too on my Macbook Pro.
I think that is some kind of issue, because I didn't find any option for that.

Automatically add to iTunes messed up my entire music collection

So I decided to try the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder thinking that it was going to be like a "watch folder" feature present in many other mp3 players (the lack of which is the only reason I've never used iTune as primary player).
Even if the "keep iTunes folder organized" and "copy files" options were disabled iTunes started to move and rename all my files using its own conventions, creating a million folders for the several GB of spare songs I've been collecting in the last 10+ years.
Most of the music was purchased from digital stores and properly tagged but many, many other files were coming from my old CD I ripped, friends, independent bands releasing stuff on the internet, or even from the pre-iTunes era so they had information only in the containing folders that I always named carefully and that now have been wiped out.
To make things worse, iTunes decided to move ALL the files it couldn't play into a generic "Not Added" folder, everything from .ogg, .mpc and .flac files plus images, booklets and playlist. So now I have a huge mess that will take me days to restore manually. I'm attaching a picture here:
I hope there is some Apple person listening here: What the **** were you thinking? Why didn't I get a warning like: "Warning: this will mess you up your entire file system". Is there anything I can do now to restore my files?

Two lessons. Backup, and test the behaviour of software rather than assuming it works the way you want it to.
tt2

Mac Acting Erratically: Please help Safari iTunes Messing Up

Okay I have an Apple PowerBook G4 running Mac OS 10.3.9 Panther (purchased late Nov 2003 was originally running 10.2.8 Jaguar) and up till a few days ago everything was running smoothly. That is until after I upgraded to QuickTime 7.1.2 and installed iTunes 6.0.5 when the problem started. Somehow my login.keychain for Safari got corrupted and I tried deleting original and making a new one.
Here's what has happened since then:
Any free media I have downloaded like videos or music off free sites (without Digital Rights Management) already still work. However, if I try downloading new stuff the new files don't work.
Since day before yesterday 4 times when I open iTunes it tells me my Library has been damaged. All my music files are still on my hard drive and are still playable but my iTunes Library file is corrupted -- how and why I don't know.
No music appears in my Library nor do any of my videos in .m4v format (iPod format) show up in my Library since then. I trash damaged file and re-import or select add to library and re-add all the media to my Library seems to work fine. I play them and most of them are playable. Even when Library works a few that played earlier have a skipping problem.
In Safari all my bookmarks got deleted -- I had to back, find the websites and re-add them -- fortunately when I closed Safari and re-launched the browser they remained saved the next time I closed and re-started the browser. However, third time (normally when something doesn't work twice they say third time's the charm) well the third time I opened Safari everything got deleted again.
My iTunes Library is acting erratically -- files I download don't work although files I already have are still playable usually except when my programs run across errors that didn't exist earlier.
I have Microsoft Office X 10.1.6 with the PowerPoint X and Excel X Security Updates, the Apple Security Updates 2006-002, 2006-003 and QuickTime 7.1.2 and iTunes 6.0.5.
When I originally downloaded and installed Security Update 2006-001 my Safari completely broke and would stop running and my Dock Menu dissappeared until restart but even then Safari stopped working. Could find no other solution than reinstalling OS X to return my Mac to pre Security Update 2006-001 levels. Not even Disk Utility solved the problem.
iTunes 6.0.2 also caused problems for me (I heard it caused problems on Windows also) the problem on my Mac was Disk Utility stopped working altogether. Fortunately, by deleting the game Chess from my Mac it fixed the problem. Today, I have Chess back on my computer because since my last OS reinstall I just updated my iTunes to 6.0.3 (I think) I now have iTunes 6.0.5 and have had no problems with Chess and iTunes or iTunes and another application like Chess preventing Disk Utility from working -- but now this problem I am describing where my Library erases itself regularly -- sometimes I restart iTunes and the new user wizard shows up and asks if I want iTunes to find my media and automatically add it to my Library when it does I say yes and it re-adds everything but somehow I have 2 files for every song on my computer and it re-imports (or imports) all my music, videos and podcasts back into my Library once and then re-imporitng it again
This time Safari is working but bookmarks are being erased and re-erased, iTunes is acting all screwy, files I download don't work when they should, I tried deleting and re-downloading a video I had saved on my hard drive (that I downloaded earlier) and the exact same file (no changes had been made to the file when it was re-uploaded) had errors playing when the download completed.
Fortunately, I had burned the video to a CD so I can re-copy it to my Mac and when I play it off the CD on my Mac or copy directly to Mac and play it works just fine.
Since downloading these updates cannot download anything anymore without errors when playing them.
If I downloaded same files earlier though they would have worked.
Only as a last resort would I do a clean reinstall of OS X -- thing is it would take a lot of work just to reinstall OS X, copy all my files I have backed up back to my hard drive, re-importing my music and artwork, re-installing Microsoft Office X and its updates, reinstalling some (but not all the latest ones if neccessary) of Apple's Security Updates, reupdating to Mac OS 10.3.9 to reinstall QuickTime 7.
I had like 283 files in my iTunes Library, including all my music, videos, podcasts etc.
Imagine how long it would take to get them all back in there; and I re-did it last night until it got erased again. Don't want to re-do it unless next time it stays permanently.
Just a note I also have Virex 7 on my Mac -- and it used to be a startup item but somehow it got disabled from starting up.
Also, I do have VLC Media Player but even that has been having problems with playing newly downloaded media files since I updated my QuickTime.
So the problem now is with my iTunes Library erasing itself continuously and even when its working sometimes refusing to play an entire track (it starts playing a song and then skips to the next one) I've checked my preferences and cross shading or whatever its called is unselected but sound checker is on.
Also the problem involves my Safari erasing bookmarks on its own as described above. Please help anyway you can!
As a last resort will do a clean reinstall, re-copy all my files back to my hard drive, reinstall my programs, re-update my Mac carefully etc.

Thanks for the help. I will take your advice and try running Disk Utility again. I have noticed sometimes when running Safari after quitting the application my defaults get changed -- that is my preferences go away. I have popup blocking and tabbed browing normally enabled by default it used to be if I enabled them as long as I didn't manually disable them that they would stay the same even after I quit and relaunch the browser, but now they get disabled when I quit and have to manually re-enable them again.
Also as noted bookmarks get deleted. Since the time I posted this thread I had at one time done a clean reinstall of OS X -- did it about 1-2 weeks ago. Not sure if videos I download on my Mac still have same problem but noticed if I download same videos on a PC that I used to download and play directly on my Mac that I could burn them to a CD or put them on a flash drive and transfer the file to Mac without any problems but downloading directly on Mac and then playing causes difficulty.
However, the same issue with Safari and iTunes has still been lingering for a while. I already have Mac OS 10.3.9 Combined Update installed should I try re-installing again? That would require me to reinstall OS X again and then update to 10.3.9. Or simply re-download and re-install 10.3.9 if possible over existing configuration so installing 10.3.9 over 10.3.9?
3 times out of 5 iTunes Music Library becomes damaged -- a few times I have tried since then deleting files in iTunes cache -- shouldn't become too big anyways -- otherwise it could become slow or something (good reason for cleaning Safari cache sometimes also) of course I wouldn't clean out the entire cache unless I had to or I thought that would fix the problem etc -- unless maybe it would even do a lot of good for resolving the problem.
I even tried trashing the damaged iTunes Library and the iTunes Music Library.xml file when the Library wasn't working.
If the problem re-occurs should I trash the iTunes preferences file(s) like iTunes.plist etc would help?

Itunes messed up my restore and now doesn't see my ipod. What should I do?

I performed a restore on my Ipod Touch (bought new a couple of years back) and itunes tells me there was an error and the restore could not be completed. Nice that it still manage to delete all my information, contacts and goodness knows what else (I chose to backup my files using the itunes function), btw.
Anyways, now my ipod just has the "connect to itunes" picture. My PC doesn't recognise my ipod, apart from Apple Mobile Device under USB controllers in the Device Manager, and itunes doesn't see or try to do anything with my pod so that I can use it.
I've tried this solution http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1538 but that didn't help and I reinstalled itunes and Apple Mobile Device Support, but to no avail.
What should I do? I'm using Windows 7 HP x64.

Put it in DFU mode.
It's a common thing among jailbreakers. No one else really needs it, but it should allow your iPod to take the official firmware of your choice.
Here is a copy from a jailbreak help guide I will not link.
Please note that this will not jailbreak your device, so back off, moderators.
Method (1)
* Attach the phone to the pc
* Turn the phone off
* Hold power and home together for *exactly* 10 seconds
* Release power but keep holding home until the pc beeps as a USB device is recognized.
* At no point will the display come on. Now your restore should work.

Album sort order suddenly gone crazy iTunes

G'day people
For some reason, the last couple of albums I've downloaded from the iTunes store, to my iTunes, displays those albums groups by artist instead of album. Even when I select them an manually change the sort order it makes no difference.
Pre-existing albums already in iTunes are not affected, just newly downloaded. This is also happening with albums I purchase directly from the iPhone and sync back to iTunes on my Mac.
Has anybody else come across this problem and have any suggestions on how I can fix it?
Cheers
Al

Figured it out. I added "Various Artists" in the Album Artist field for every track and it then sorted them all together.

Please help !!!!! my new Iphone 4 G Itunes messed up the upgrade !!!

Hi All,
I bough t 3 weeks ago in argentina a new 4G, Ituenes told me there is a new IOS 4.2 upgrade I didnt read it well but it was around 600 mb download. so Itunes downloeded it and started to upgrade the phone but suddenley my phone is stuck in restore mode and I get this error: the Iphone "iphone"could not be restored. An unknown error occured [1013]
what to do? any ideas? I wanted to open a case in the support but they ask for the searial number and I cant get it since the phone is in restore mode !! now I am in lima peru, can I go to a shope here to replace the phone although I know it a software problem ?? I cant belive I bought a new phone which cost a lot of $$$$$$ and it not working !!
please help !
and yes, I did a restart to my pc and tried to restore again.
thanks a lot,
juan

Windows
1. Go to Start > Programs > Accessories
2. Run Notepad. Note: on Windows 7, right click on Notepad icon and select “Run As Administrator”
3. Click File > Open
4. Go to Windows/System32/drivers/etc
5. In “files of type:” select all documents
6. Open “hosts”
7. Delete any entry with “gs.apple.com”
8. Click Save
9. Restore your iPhone
Good luck

Itunes messing up my app folders

Hei.
I have the following problem:
- I installed itunes on my new computer
- transfered the apps to itunes
- Now I want to sync - itunes tells me that all my apps are replaced
and at the same time I can see that all my folders are not there anymore.
How can I tell itunes that my iphone app folders should be transfered to itunes?
Help appreciated
Greets from Finland!
Björn

Crazy iTunes Mess

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for