ITunes freezing my MBP completely when opened

Question

Hi, this has started happening to me just yesterday night, and if I can't find a fix for it could mean disaster to me as I wouldn't be able to sync my iPhone's info until someone somehow finds a solution, so any help is greatly appreciated.
I was organizing my songs as usual last night, everything seemed to be fine, then I walked away to do something else; when I came back, I turned on iTunes again, and my laptop completely froze (can't manually close the program, had to do a hard restart). Same thing happened again after restarting, everytime I turn iTunes on, within 5 seconds of iTunes popping up, "spinning beach ball" shows up, and my computer freezes. my cursor still moves, clock is still working, but I can't click on anything. After searching online for a solution, I have come to realize that it's quite a common problem, but no one seems to have a sure shot way to fix this. I have tried un-installing/re-installing, and I have tried going to disk utility and repairing disk permission, but to no avail. I would really hate to format my hard drive, as there are way too many things in my laptop to back up, so that would be my absolute last resort and I'll try to steer away from that if possible. If anyone can lend a helpful tip, that'd be great! Please let me know also if you need any more information from me. Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

first back up your music library completely to an external HardDrive, everything, including movies, TV, apps, everything...
completely wipe your iTunes off of your HD, (preferences, everything do a search) then just make sure all other programs are working... if you experience other crashes, then you do need a clean install, maybe even a HD wipe.... (also remove battery for a couple mins to reset some things helps some things, but this doesn't sound like one of them)
if no other crashes, try installing itunes from a stand alone installer, downloaded from Apple....
anyway a start...