iTunes for Windows slow buffering - music stops and starts

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Level 1

9 points

iTunes for Windows slow buffering - music stops and starts

Hi,

This is relative recent problem I've only had in the last few months of my many years using iTunes for PC (Windows 10 64-bit; iTunes 12.12.3.5).

Some tracks will be slow to start playing - the line remains blue for a long time.

Other times after playing a couple of tracks the music will stop playing, buffer a bit, stop again, etc, etc. This will continue indefinitely, track after track forever, until I intervene (as below).

I can see the grey play line is filling very slowly or not at all. Double clicking to start the song again usually doesn't solve the problem - the song just restarts with the grey buffer line partially filled where it left off.

BUT, if I double-click a previously successfully played track, then right away try restarting the offending track, BAM! the buffer line fills up instantly and the song plays... for a couple more songs, then it stalls again.

Speedtest gives me a consistent 200/100 Mbps (even while streaming music!) so bandwidth is not the problem. NO issues playing YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc.

It's like iTunes just isn't requesting the data it needs...

I've tried:

Restarting the PC
Restarting the router
Turning Home Sharing on and off
Excluding iTune.exe and Music folder from my antivirus

I'm aware of a couple of similar threads, which haven't provided any useful solution:

Please help!

Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Mar 24, 2022 11:28 PM

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Answer 1

Jaym_8

Community Specialist

Mar 25, 2022 5:46 PM in response to Steve Gordon

Hello Steve Gordon,

If you're unable to play music in iTunes, you'll want to follow these steps: If you have problems playing music in iTunes on PC

If it's still not working after that, we'd recommend contacting Apple for assistance: Get Support

Cheers!

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Answer 2

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Apr 1, 2022 6:39 AM in response to Steve Gordon

You're welcome, Steve,

We would definitely recommend that you reach out to Apple Support to investigate this behavior with you.

If you'd like to remove iTunes and all of its components then reinstall, this is a handy guide which will show you how: Remove and reinstall iTunes and related software components for Windows 7 and later

Before you remove iTunes, you can follow the steps outlined here to ensure that you can restore your iTunes data: Back up and restore your iTunes library on your PC

Here are some things to know

Your iTunes library, a database that's made up of all of the music and other media that you add to iTunes for Windows, is organized into two iTunes library files and an iTunes Media folder.

Before you back up your media:

•Consolidate your iTunes library.

•Redownload any previous purchases, like music, movies and TV shows, and more. The only way to back up your purchased media is to download your purchases to your computer.

We hope this helps.

Take care!

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Answer 3

Steve Gordon Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 31, 2022 8:58 PM in response to Jaym_8

Thanks Jaym, but those issues are not particularly relevant to my problem.

I'll try support, but does Apple actually respond to such requests?

BTW, is there a best practice for completely uninstall and reinstall iTunes (incl. what I should back up first - I don't want to lose all my ratings, etc, and ideally retain all my UI settings/options, which are always a pain to re set up)? I've tried reinstalling the downloadable over the top of my current install, but it tells me it came from Microsoft Store.

Thanks.

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iTunes for Windows slow buffering - music stops and starts

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