ITunes Match now stalls on step 1. I have a PC with Windows Vista. I've use Match for a long time

Question

iTunes Match now stalls on step 1.  I have a PC with Windows Vista.  I've used iTunes Match for a long time & it has worked well until last week.  Most of my songs now have a dotted outlined cloud beside them & I can't download to my phone.  6 new albums can't be seen at all.  I've turned off Match (with shift key down) & turned it back on - restricted my upload speed to 75% of max - I even uninstalled iTunes & re-installed it.  Any suggestions?

Answer 1

iTunes Match is stalled in the same place again today.  Step 1 seems to have completed as the blue progress bar is complete.  The message says "Delivering your iTunes Match results..."  When I went to bed last night, this is where iTunes was stuck.  But this morning, Match had stopped trying to "deliver."  It obviously did not finish because 6 new albums do not show up on my iPhone 5 - all of the 3 steps on the Match page were grayed out this morning & the "Start" button was available.
This is what I did yesterday - I looked at My Music and clicked "Songs."  I then added the "iCloud" column and sorted by that field.  I found about 100 files that had a problem of some sort (cloud with exclamation point inside).  Each of them had lost track of where the music file was - even though the music files were exactly where they should have been.  I re-linked (one at a time) all of the music files to the song titles.  In the cloud field one song was described as "ineligible for iTunes Match."  It had a could with a line drawn through it.   I didn't know what that meant, so I deleted the song.
I then turned off iTunes Match holding the shift key down & iTunes began collecting information from my library.  This took several hours but it did seem to complete because it changed to the "delivering results" message.  However, this morning I noticed that all of the files I re-linked yesterday still had the "error cloud" symbol today - a cloud with an exclamation mark inside.  Yesterday these songs wouldn't play until I re-linked the files.  Today they will play as expected, but they still have the "error cloud.'  To add to my confusion albums marked with the "error file" are still able to be downloaded to my phone, but the songs with the "error cloud" will not play smoothly on my PC.  They stutter regularly throughout playback.  However, if I download one of those songs or albums to my phone, it plays perfectly.
I hope this helps someone to explain what my problem is & the appropriate solution.  I have a little more than 12,000 songs in my library in case that makes a difference.  Should I just delete the files with he "error cloud"?  All of the songs appear to be still in the cloud because they are available for download to my phone.