ITunes 8 'odd non-responsive behaviour' when trying to log in to Store

Question

Whenever I try and use any of the functions of iTunes 7.x or 8 and the iTunes store (e.g. signing in an account, attempting to create a new account) or enabling Genius in iTunes 8, iTunes becomes unresponsive in a distinctly odd fashion.
I can still access the iTunes store, browse music etc., but anything that requires authentication, it seems, causes the store to stop responding. Once thestore has decided to become unresponsive, I can't browse the store any further, but can still use the rest of iTunes (e.g. my own library...) The 'information window' (for want of a better word: where song information is usually displayed at the top centre of the iTunes window) shows "Accessing iTunes Store..." and the crosshatched progress bar, which then doesn't change into the solid progress bar as normal. iTunes can be used normally, but refuses to close, and requires Task Manager to kill it.
I'm running iTunes 8 on Win XP SP 2 (originally iTunes 7.x, which had the same problem -- I had naively thought an upgrade might fix it!). I've tried simple things like disabling the Windows Firewall, don't to the best of my knowledge have any other firewalls running, and have tried killing anything other than the vital system processes in Task Manager and the Windows Services Viewer thingy.
I must admit to being slightly worried: my new iPhone arrives in a few days and I'd quite like to be able to get the App Store etc running...!
(edited to add: I've tried running the iTunes network diagnostics, which crashed iTunes properly, to the point at which the whole program stopped responding and needed killing in Task Manager -- I'm sorry that's not going to be much use..!)
Message was edited by: srg40

Answer 1

ive been having odd behavior for my itune store too. whenever i try to access it, all the info loads like normal but if i click on any thing it freaks out and all the info for the songs and everything just freaks out. it becomes like it was made by a five year old on microsoft word. there are no images, there is only a picture of a link of chain and one of the chains is broken. i can still read the title, the price and the artist but, they are all in a wierd font size.
i still have access to everything but i am reluctant to click on anything because i dont want it to spread to my itunes. this just started today and was working fine before
is there anything i can do about it and it it safe for me to do anything?