I'm using itunes 6.0.4.2. It runs fine when no music is added to it. As soon as I added my collection to it (something like 1600 folders), it gets slow and sluggish. With no music added to it i noticed it takes up about 35,000 k of mem usage. When i added my collection it jumps to 110,013 than after about 3 mins or so it drops to 63,820k of mem usage. My system became slow and sluggish until the usage dropped. Then when I closed it, I noticed my machine got slow and sluggish again. So I CTL ALT DEL and clicked on the processes tab in the task manager and it stated that the mem usage was back up to 110,013 and this time it was using up 95% of my CPU. I then kill the process from there and everything is back to normal until i start itunes again and the problem as stated above happens again. So is this an itunes bug or something? I thought at first it was my machine (3.0ghz, 512ddr ram) so i tried on my 2nd machine (dual core 2.7ghz, 1gb dual channel ddr2 ram) and it did the exact same thing. Is there anyway to solve this? Also I just noticed when I'm doing something in itunes weather it be ripping or fixing tags mem usage jumps to 114,452k.

I experienced the very same itunes behaviour and I found the reason for the 90+ seconds of 99% CPU load from itunes.exe after itunes shutdown ... I looked up my firewall log just out of curiosity and saw that itunes.exe was constantly trying to contact some IP adress ... perhaps to submit my music collection to Apple.

Guess what happened? I don't use it anymore ...

Exactly the same problem here ...
This 99% cpu bug on exit is annoying.
I just decided to stop using it.

I believe this is not a bug ... apple wants to know what kind of music you listen to ... that way, they can present you some specific ITMS adverts ...

iTunes is a huge bloated piece of software. It has many components that run in the background at all times whether you want them to or not.

I stopped updating my iTunes a while back when I started to realize that it was becoming more and more invasive.
JXL

Well I now use foobar 0.8 for all my ipod managing needs but was wondering if the problem was just me.

This should go away if you disable the "ministore" by hitting the button with the triangle in it next to the equaliser button. You should be able to prevent any interaction by disabling the iTunes store in the parental controls.

Howver iTunes is an absolutely horrible bit of software, it isn't ever a very good music player. The only utility it has on Windows is for transfering music ripped with EAC onto an iPod. However there are other bits of software like Ethpod which can do the same.

For some reason Apple seems to get away with doing stuff that would land any other company in court, I mean even Winamp allows you do explictly disable the sending of usage statistics (although I suspect it's only a matter of time before that goes now most (all?) of the original Nullsoft have left).

Ministore is the first thing i disable and the problem persists. I will try the parental control thing and get back.

nope problem is still there. Is there any guide or any way to convert flac files to itunes aac in foobar 0.8 then automatically delete the flac files?

I had the 99% cpu usage problem even before ministore was implemented.

Drunk 24/7: just use iTunesEncode to make your AAC encodes.

thanks

iTunes just scales up badly. I have a 40.000 song library (ripped my entire 3000+ CD collection) and it makes iTunes gobble up 150+ MB of RAM. Although I've got to hand it to Apple, they've increased performance from 4.7 to 6.0 considerably, especially searches. Still it's a bit of a dog even on a pretty modern system (Athlon 64 3500+, 1 GB dual channel). Unfortunately, I have yet to find another free music library app that can handle such libraries. I use Winamp myself (which is no athlete either), and WMP occasionally (I'd never thought I'd say it, but it's turning into a damn fine piece of software with v11). My wife uses mainly iTunes. Last time I checked out Foobar, the library slowed it down to unworkable responsiveness - I guess I'll wait until 1.0 is here.

I suspect iTunes performs an integrity check on its database before it shuts down, which would explain the huge cpu load on exit with big libraries. Another tip: the frequent skipping in sound (even on the fastest computers!) can be fixed by setting the output to WaveOut instead of DirectSound in Quicktime settings. But yes, iTunes is a terrible application in a lot of ways, great interface but the underlying playback engine is a heap of rubbish - Windows has DirectShow for a reason, Apple!

eofor: I've had good results with foobar2000 0.8.3 and about 10000 songs, it doesn't use much RAM and isn't slow at all. 0.9.1 should behave even better, try it out.

I love my fb2k.

If you have the time to configure and set it up, it's the greatest player out there (In my opinion).

I forget how may tracks are in my database, but I have over 300 CDs converted to FLAC in there and another 250 or so still in mp3 format.

I can find all of my music without any problems and the sound quality and styling are right up my ally.
JXL

most iTunes slowdowns are caused by anti-virus software constantly rescanning the iTunesDB

almost every anti-virus i've used, that actively scans, brings the system to a crawl when iTunes is running and 100% cpu usage at times

but also...a lot of people have noted iTunes does need at least 512mb of ram to even scroll smoothly on Windows

Make sure you have searching for shared music and sharing your music disabled or you may have slowdowns sharing an extremely large library.

Other than that, I have no problems with iTunes on a Mac.

My brother has itunes on a mac with no problems either. But I also heard that itunes on windows was not as good performance wise as on the mac.

That 99% thing used to bug the crap out of me. On my old system with a Athlon 2800+ and 512MB of SDRAM, it used to last nearly a minute. I added 512MB more RAM, and it dropped to 30 seconds. My new system is an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with 1GB DDR RAM and a much faster SATA HDD. It now lasts only five seconds! My library size is 14,000 files.