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Well... nuts.

I got my iTunes libraries copied over from my Macbook and my desktop PC to a SMB share on a network server on my LAN. Got everything merged, and other than an occasional pause/hiccup it was working pretty well. I'm starting iTunes from a shortcut on the network drive I have a couple seasons worth of tv episodes left to download, both SD & HD, purchased from the iTunes store. Problem is... now whenever I try to open iTunes and watch an episode stored on the server share, it freezes up. If I let it check for downloads... it freezes. If I start watching an episode... it freezes. Sometimes I don't even get that far... and it freezes. I mean 'freezes' as in no movement of the download bar, no response to mouse clicks or keystrokes, and shown in Task Manager on the PC as 'Not Responding'. I have to kick it loose and restart it... and then it freezes again. I've gone into the Preferences and made sure it was set to not automatically download content from the store, etc. but it still keeps trying... and freezing.

I'm at my wits end here... I spent an awful lot of time (better part of a week) getting everything copied over to the network drive (household network is combination of 802.11g and HomePlugAV) and now I can't watch my stuff, or even do anything at all with iTunes.

Help!

Monte

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1 Answer

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If two iTunes instances are open at the same time, using the same library file, bad things happen. You need to have a way to make sure it's not open on both PC and Mac. My suggestion is to leave it open on the PC, then have the Mac use Home Sharing (with a 'local' library file) and stream that way. When you add new music, you'll have to do it from the PC. There is a way to select between multiple libraries when iTunes starts, so you could use a local library and Home Sharing most of the time, but still start up using the shared library whenever you need to add music. To select, hold on Option on the Mac, or Alt on Windows.

Either way, make sure only one iTunes instance is using the SMB library at any time.

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Actually, I hadn't gotten around to setting up the Macbook again after copying things over, as apparently I need separate library files for Mac & PC (due to different paths stored in therein). So only one machine, PC, accessing the library at any one time. I copied some of the library files and episodes back to the PC and restarted iTunes running locally off the updated library there, and it still hangs... – memilanuk Oct 14 '10 at 15:32

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