ITunes Takes Forever (3 Minutes) to Quit

I'm running iTunes 7.5 (19) under Leoopard (10.5.1). I find that iTunes consistently takes between 2-1/2 and 3 minutes to quit (which means that I have to wait until it quits before I can logout).
When I quit the application, the iTunes window closes and any music playing ceases. Then the application goes unresponsive for several minutes before finally quitting.
There is no indication of problems in the log.
The problem is manifest while running without plugins.
The problem is not manifest in a virgin account with an empty iTunes library.

I wouldn't expect iTunes to take any time to do anything if the library is empty; it has nothing to do.
I appears that iTunes is constantly writing the iTunes Library and .xml files to the hard disk while the application runs. As iTunes runs, it keeps track of housekeeping things such as how many times and the last time a song has been played, etc. When iTunes it quit, the application needs to close these open files so that they are in a good state for the next time iTunes it started up.
We have found a significant dependency in iTunes related to opening the application such that it takes a year and a day for it to read the sound files one by one from the hard disk. It appears that iTunes is trying to build an index or database of the sound files, possibly with relation to building links to the album art.
I have not experienced the problem you are having to the same extent, but I find that the saving sequence has clearly increased in time with 7.5. (ie., from inconsequential, to a couple of seconds). In your case, it is in the realm of minutes.
Take a look at the following as possible contributors:
1) It will take much more time to close if your iTunes library is located on a network attached HD (or wireless network) than if it is on your internal HD or even directly attached HD.
2) It will take longer to close if your HD is pegged for free space available
3) It may take longer to write the iTunes Library files depending on the number of sound files in your collection: how many do you have? (Order of magnitude = 100/1,000/10,000 ?)
4) The bigger your iTunes Library file and .xml file, the longer it will take. My database files are on the order of 10 MB each.
5) There may be a dependency with the artwork. Do you have a large amount of album art installed manually? (drag/drop/paste)
6) Does this happen if you revert to iTunes 7.4.2? We found that reverting to 7.4.2 solved the problems with the startup delay
- Good luck!

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ITunes takes forever to open!!

When I open iTunes in my Dock, it takes at least five minutes to open. I timed it tonight. This is a fairly recent problem, maybe for the last month or so. I'm wondering if anyone knows if this could be because I have a LOT of iPhone Applications in iTunes now?
I'm also having problems with other apps on my Mac, such as iPhoto running very slow, but only iTunes takes forever to open. iPhoto opens quickly, freezes a lot while using it, and takes several minutes to close, probably due to having over 20,000 photos in it.
So I'm thinking the iTunes problem probably isn't related to the iPhoto problems.
Also, I just did an "Archive and Install" with the Leopard OS at the advice of an Apple store Genius, but it didn't fix or change anything. In fact, the Install took six hours, which I believe is longer than normal.
Does anyone know if a large amount of App store apps in iTunes can affect how long it takes to open?
Or should I be asking this question at the iPhone forum?
Thanks in advance, Deb

Hello back, and thank you both for responding. I had no idea there was two separate iTunes forums. I guess I'll go post to the right one.
I'm the only Mac user in a house of PC users, so my three guys are no help to me. Well, one of them has a Macbook, but he uses his desktop PC the most. Anyway...
I have 50 Gigs left on my hard drive and that's only because I had to do two "Archive and Installs" on my iMac last week. That left me with over 20 gigs in two "Previous System Folders". I'm going to delete them eventually to get that space back, but my problems were happening before when I had almost 75 gigs, and are still happening now. Nothing has changed.
My iTunes has maybe 10 gigs of stuff total, with most of it music, then maybe iPhone applications (probably 2 or 3 gigs), but only one short 45 minute video, and a couple of podcasts. Nothing else. I'm a middle aged mom, so I'm not much into iTunes except for my iPhone stuff.
So, I'm confused by iTunes reluctance to open, but will go post on the Mac iTunes forum.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to me!
Greatly appreciated... Deb

After update, iTunes takes over 30 minutes to start up

I updated iTunes to 10.6.3.25 a couple of days ago to the latest version, and now it takes over 30 minutes to load. I click the iTunes icon on my desktop and get the mouse spinner for about 2 seconds, then it disappears. During that time, I can see in task manager that iTunes.exe using the about 25% of my CPU (i3 550) and over 100,000k of my 8GB of RAM. After it finally loads, I plug in my iPod and iTunes gives no indication that it sees it at all. Windows sees it, but iTunes doesn't. My question is, what can I do to fix this? I've already went into programs & features and went to changes and hit repair on each of the apple programs I have on my computer and that changed nothing, and I also tried this.
tl;dr iTunes takes forever to load and iPod doesn't show up in iTunes

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ITunes takes forever to load

When i first got my computer and installed iTunes, everything worked fine. then when my Norton internet security expired it really slowed down. like it takes 10 minutes to just go to the iTunes homepage, ON A GOOD DAY. About a month ago i installed Norton 360 (better than the one before) and iTunes still takes forever! Does anyone have any help?

No help - but I have the same problem. Not only does it take forever to load but once it has loaded it takes forever to move around the library

ITunes takes 2-3 minutes to write video tags

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Same here on my 2.4GHz Core 2 duo 3gb ram iMac...its not the computer problem for any of us just the new itunes is broken i guess
its tv shows though you're right...i find the best thing to do is edit the name (faster with tags) then when you click ok and it finishes, go back and re-edit and change the bulk of the info and it will write the tag fast

New iTunes takes forever to open. What do i do?

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Do the usual 1st Aid: Run Disk Utility and fix permissions and check/fix your drive.
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Hello back, and thank you both for responding. I had no idea there was two separate iTunes forums. I guess I'll go post to the right one.
I'm the only Mac user in a house of PC users, so my three guys are no help to me. Well, one of them has a Macbook, but he uses his desktop PC the most. Anyway...
I have 50 Gigs left on my hard drive and that's only because I had to do two "Archive and Installs" on my iMac last week. That left me with over 20 gigs in two "Previous System Folders". I'm going to delete them eventually to get that space back, but my problems were happening before when I had almost 75 gigs, and are still happening now. Nothing has changed.
My iTunes has maybe 10 gigs of stuff total, with most of it music, then maybe iPhone applications (probably 2 or 3 gigs), but only one short 45 minute video, and a couple of podcasts. Nothing else. I'm a middle aged mom, so I'm not much into iTunes except for my iPhone stuff.
So, I'm confused by iTunes reluctance to open, but will go post on the Mac iTunes forum.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to me!
Greatly appreciated... Deb

ITunes takes FOREVER to open or crashes on new iMac

Hi. I just got a new iMac (recent PC convert) and have all my music loaded into iTunes and the such. Works great when open.
However, I notice that iTunes takes an unusual amount of time to open. Sometimes the dock shows the little arrow like its open, but the program is not open. If I do a Force Quit, it shows as not responding and when I force quit it, the dock still shows it as open. If I try force quit again, its listed again as not responding...
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If that does not solve your problem download and install the current iTunes as standalone application.

ITunes takes 10-30 minutes to launch.

Every time I try to launch itunes, it shows up whenever it feels like it. It can take up to 30 minutes sometimes. I only have 1,000 songs and 5 or so playlists. Also, another weird thing that happens is everytime, when it finally does show up, i am required to type in my apple id password to "Sign In To Use This Computer for Automatic Downloads". Every. Single. Time. Both of these problems showed up around the same time. I have the latest version of iTunes. My computer has an i7 processor and 8gigs of ram, so I don't think that is the issue. If anyone could help, or offer suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it; as this is very frustrating. Also, once it's open it runs perfectly.

I also I this problem and untill now none of the above fixes solved my isues!
My itunes takes around 10 to 15 min (with itunes process in process manager) to load!
The strange think is that my system doesn't show any "stress" while opening it, the cpu load is fine (around 0% actually) and system memory is around 50% 60%, that is totally normal in my computer with itunes and chrome open.
Please help me this is very annoing, I takes ages to manage my iphone!
I tried booth lauching in itunes safe mode and start with a new library (shift while opening) the itunes still takes ages to lauch!
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Safari takes forever to load then quits...

...all of a sudden.
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The beachball spins intermittently throughout the process.
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There are a number of approaches to speeding Safari up. A reinstall ought to be the last choice, simply because the problem may not be directly related to the application framework, but rather to the various information or data files feeding Safari.
Curious, are you seeing slowness in any other applications?
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Also, on the system preference>Accounts panel, click on "log-in" options. There, select "fast user switching". This allows you to go back and forth between user accounts via an icon in your Menu Bar at the top of the computer screen.
Log-on to the new account and start Safari. If Safari works without problem in the new account, then the slow behavior is specific to your regular user account. Otherwise, similar response means a system-wide problem. Knowing this will help determine the next step.
Post back with results.

Why does my iTunes take 3 - 5 minutes to load?

Recently my iTunes is taking forever to load. I have a late 2009 iMac, which still performs well in every other area except starting iTunes. I'm running fully updated Lion OS. My iTunes library is decent sized, but nothing that should take this long, about 20gb of mostly music and a few movies and podcast. I began noticing this a few weeks after I upgraded to Lion, but the first few weeks it worked fine, so I'm not sure if its Lion related at all. Once the program is actually started it performs well and is very responsive. For the first 30 seconds after I start iTunes, my system seems sluggish and bogged down, then it snaps back to normal speed, but iTunes still takes several minutes after that to start.
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Solved my problem by reading another thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191240?tstart=0
Thought I would post the solution in case anyone stumbles over this thread.
After putting ituneshelper.app back in startup items, my itunes starts in about 15 seconds instead of 3 minutes.

Updating iTunes takes forever

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I've learned the hard way to always backup the existing itunes files, then perform the upgrade, then restart itunes and let it run all night if needed to update whatever it likes to update. Force quit is not a good idea - better to let it finish what it wants to do.
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having an old version of itunes in case I needed to fall back. But that seems to have gone away. I hope this 9.1.1 is a good one. . . In case not, anybody know where I can find a 9.0.3 install image?
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ITunes takes forever to load and freezes my computer.

iTunes has started taking over a half hour or sometimes much more time to load and even to play a song once it is loaded. This started with a previous version of iTunes after doing nothing to my computer except some windows 7 updates. After trying to install the new version of iTunes, it stopped on computing space requirements for literally 4+ hours before completing the install. New version still has the same problems as the last. Task manager shows it as running as soon as i choose to open it, but it takes the window 30 min to 2 hours to open, and just recently another 45 minutes to start playing a song that I clicked on. Once the song eventually started playing, I was able to play other songs like normal, however once I hit a song to stop, it froze my whole computer and I had to restart. iTunes is the only program that acts this way, I have tried at least 13 other programs that open and close normally.

lmao so im not the only windows user to have this same problem.... i have no solutions and i hate to be a rude person and say that none of these other peoples comments seems to work.... you would think apple support would take the time to contact us through this forum and give us their real opinion or actuall help.

Itunes takes forever to open, or is not responding in task manager, windows 7

My computer was just fine 2 days ago No windows updates were applied. I down loaded a 10 day demo of SureThing disc labeler to label with lightscribe cds.
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Windows7 HP Pavillion Elite HPE computer.
Thank you for your help.

Hi CTghost54,
Thanks for visiting Apple Support Communities.
I'd suggest the troubleshooting steps in this article:
iTunes for Windows Vista or Windows 7: Troubleshooting unexpected quits, freezes, or launch issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1717
Best Regards,
Jeremy

When syncing large database of photos (107,000 photos) constituting nearly 35GB, itunes takes forever on "importing photos" even if i select only 1 folder of 10 images. Windows 7, IPAD Air both latest versions. photo library is on my local internal HD .

i tried selecting a folder with less than 50 photos as my source, importing photos phase still takes longer than what sounds normal for such a small number of photos, but the job is done nevertheless.
But what is worth noting, is that even if i run another pass of sync without touching the photos section (i.e. neither adding nor deleting any photo from the previous sync) it still takes the same amount of time on the "importing photos" phase.
when i select the actual photo library folder as my source (the one containing the 107,000 photos); at that point even selecting a subfolder in it that contains merely 10 photos generates the same dilemma.
i tried photoshop elements, spent like 4 hours building my library there, hoping that if i select it as the source in the photo tab in itunes, things would work out for the better, i was mistaken!
at this point am really out of options, and need some serious help.
few extra diagnostic infos:
the above manifests even on other devices like my iphone5.
the computer used is not exactly top notch but works for my Autocad drawings, i figure it should suffice for itunes (Dell Pentium D 3.19Ghz, 4GB Ram, 3TB HD, running windows 7 (32bit) ultimate)
the above persists when i sync wirelessly (not a USB bug issue)
please any help is appreciated, if you need further details, kindly let me know

i tried selecting a folder with less than 50 photos as my source, importing photos phase still takes longer than what sounds normal for such a small number of photos, but the job is done nevertheless.
But what is worth noting, is that even if i run another pass of sync without touching the photos section (i.e. neither adding nor deleting any photo from the previous sync) it still takes the same amount of time on the "importing photos" phase.
when i select the actual photo library folder as my source (the one containing the 107,000 photos); at that point even selecting a subfolder in it that contains merely 10 photos generates the same dilemma.
i tried photoshop elements, spent like 4 hours building my library there, hoping that if i select it as the source in the photo tab in itunes, things would work out for the better, i was mistaken!
at this point am really out of options, and need some serious help.
few extra diagnostic infos:
the above manifests even on other devices like my iphone5.
the computer used is not exactly top notch but works for my Autocad drawings, i figure it should suffice for itunes (Dell Pentium D 3.19Ghz, 4GB Ram, 3TB HD, running windows 7 (32bit) ultimate)
the above persists when i sync wirelessly (not a USB bug issue)
please any help is appreciated, if you need further details, kindly let me know

ITunes Takes Forever (3 Minutes) to Quit

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