For a very very very long time now, I've been experiencing a really annoying problem with iTunes on my Mac... everytime I start it, it hangs for quite some time and along with it comes the lovely spinning beachball of death. Well not anymore, today I finally discovered the cause of the problem... one bad MP3 file.

So how did I discover this? Well simple really...

  1. With iTunes NOT running, I started Activity Monitor
  2. I then ordered the processes by name by clicking the "Process Name" column
  3. I then started iTunes. As expected, it hung and I got my beachball.
  4. With the confirmed hang, I then located the iTunes process in Activity Monitor and selected it
  5. At the top of the Activity Monitor window is a blue "Inspect" button. I clicked this.
  6. In the window that opened, I selected the "Open Files and Ports" tab. This shows you all the files and ports this application has opened.
  7. I then scrolled down to the bottom and found the last file opened... "Live @ Trade.mp3"...

    iTunes Hang

  8. I let iTunes finish its hang, located the file within iTunes and deleted it completely.
  9. I then quit iTunes and started it again.

Bingo!!! iTunes opened up instantly and was completely responsive straight away. So I lost one MP3 file I don't listen to anymore... so what. At least iTunes is responding as it should. I'm a happy boy now.