iTunes 8 kills AirTunes, iPod touch causing BSOD

We were all excited to stream Genius-generated playlists from iTunes 8 to our Airport Express last night when -- poof -- "-3256 Unknown Error Occurred." This cryptic error, along with another under the equally descriptive name "-15000," has been keeping iTunes 8 upgraders from using their Airtunes on remote speakers. Turns out the issue is one of Firewalls and Firmware. The solutions come from users at Apple's discussion boards. Basically, you need to either turn off your Firewall and / or allow iTunes to accept incoming requests or update your Airport Express to the latest (7.3.2 as of this post) firmware version via AirPort Utility 6.3. Meanwhile, Windows-based iPod touch users are seeing Blue Screens of Death when plugging in their players due to some other undocumented problem. The solution there looks to be a reboot with the touch plugged in to force the system to recognize the device, run a sync, and turn off photo syncing (not the most elegant solution, clearly). Let's hope Apple at least updates this with something more descriptive than "-3256" in the future. Customer service reps at Apple say they're aware of the problems and are working on a fix.

Read - iTunes 8 & Airtunes/Airport Express
Read - blue screen comes up when plugging in ipod

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[bob sakamano @ Sep 10th 2008 9:50AM]

[you're welcome]

[swingin' dick hero @ Sep 10th 2008 9:55AM]

[Attention whore]

[waiownsyou @ Sep 10th 2008 9:53AM]

You get a little, you lose a little.

ALL LEGIT!

[Jacksplat @ Sep 10th 2008 9:58AM]

So just be to clear: Apple makes the best software ever?

[Jon @ Sep 10th 2008 10:17AM]

Seriously. I was ecstatic about using the new Itunes 8 with the Genius playlist feature. I got home and downloaded it and the isntall ran just like normal. I created a few Genius playlists and loved it's accuracy in determining a playlist. Then I plugged in my iPhone (not iPod as mentioned above) and blue screen...I have been using Vista since it's beta and have NEVER had a blue screen. I rebooted and the same thing happened again (actually 3 times).

I got on the Apple forums to see if it was an issue and it had already hit the fan. The work around that everyone said to try was to unplug your HP printer. Shockingly, I had an HP printer and proceeded to unplug. I then plugged my iPhone in for a sync...and no blue screen. OMG. Are you serious?

[Murphy Mac @ Sep 10th 2008 10:19AM]

For all of you who complain that Apple gets too much coverage here - it obviously goes both ways. A glitch like this would never be reported here from most other companies.

[konshuss @ Sep 10th 2008 10:29AM]

i think this article negates that claim, facetious or otherwise.

personally i think a more useful error message is: :(

[BluesK1d @ Sep 10th 2008 10:40AM]

lollerskates

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Sep 10th 2008 10:51AM]

MurphyMac,

You're spot on, not sure why you're low-ranked. I guess the dolts who rub their hands with glee any time any minor glitch comes up but then wet their pants in anger when a non-glitch Apple post comes thru don't get that the company simple attracts more attention, good and bad.

FWIW, my airtunes works, but I don't have my localhost FW on my system.

[amishsniper @ Sep 10th 2008 10:54AM]

You KNOW it's got to be M$ at fault; it can't be Apple and you should be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting such a blasphemy!

[jakem @ Sep 10th 2008 10:57AM]

@UnixSystemEngineer and @MacMurphy: It's precisely because of these problems that so many of us wonder why so many postings are devoted to Apple and their products. If your iPhones had stable reception you'd have got the memo.

[Anand D @ Sep 10th 2008 11:04AM]

@Jon

Apple, Microsoft and HP have teamed up to give us more blue screens!

[kccboy2004 @ Sep 10th 2008 11:13AM]

Apple thanks you all for your continued support in assisting with Beta testing.

[kccboy2004 @ Sep 10th 2008 11:22AM]

"Apple thanks you all for your continued support in assisting with Beta testing"

That comment is fair enough.

[Dale @ Sep 10th 2008 11:23AM]

I have to agree - iTunes on the PC is a pile of poop, but then, it's hardly like it's the only program on there that causes the blue screen of death is it?

[DaveEllis @ Sep 10th 2008 11:59AM]

I found iTunes8 to be pretty poor. It is still slow and laggy, and I still only use it because I have an iPhone.

The Genius thing isn't too smart. It kept recommending I buy songs I already own from the iTunes store. Sometimes it recommended I buy a song from the album it was currently playing.

The 2.x software for the iPhone is slow and crashes a lot. iTunes8 crashes a lot, and Genius is a waste of time. MobileMe appears to be completely broken. Come on Apple, this isn't like you.

[Backlin @ Sep 10th 2008 12:28PM]

Who would've thought an Apple product was cause my first Bluescreen under Vista?

[GaryZ @ Sep 10th 2008 1:24PM]

I'm definitely holding back the Friday 2.1 upgrade... waiting for the initial responses from the brave ones...

[kurt.tappe @ Sep 10th 2008 3:36PM]

@Backlin:
Sure Apple deserves to be slammed here, but if Vista were a truly stable OS, why did it bluescreen? Seriously, should it not have been designed to catch bad system calls (assuming that's what this was)? If plugging in these new devices crashed OS X, I'd be pointing the finger at Leopard too. But of course the MS fanbois will low-rank this comment for daring to suggest Vista is not blame-free here....

[deedeedee @ Sep 11th 2008 1:49AM]

i always bought apple stuff cuz they look cool, thats all, no thing else.

I had more problems with my 1st gen macbook pro than my previous vaio, thinkpad, inspirion; actually had to sent it back and took them a month to get it back to me.

My 5th gen iPod had some glitches as well, e.g. when you use it all the way till battery completely drained, the disk just keeps spinning and wont turn off, I found the fix but still very annoying.

Mac OS X was nice, but Safari crashes, Mail crashes, iTunes crashes, and various iLife apps have crashed as well, my XP box does not crash that often; well just to be fair, I like how in osx app crash usually doesnt affect the OS at all, where as sometimes XP crashes I have to restart; but seriously, my XP doesnt really crash...

I'm really satisfied with the iPhone though, I stayed on 1.1.4 and it has no problems at all, im staying the hell away from 2.x for now.

Apple isn't some awesome company, they fuck things up too, and from what I can tell that happens quite often.

[Jon @ Sep 10th 2008 9:59AM]

Why is it that microsoft can never release software that just works? oh wait, this came from apple???

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! it cant be true

[whatever @ Sep 10th 2008 11:12AM]

funny, my 20" imac has a 8 bit ips monitor and my 2 year old macbook has never seen a case and still works fine. but im just bowing to the alter of jobs!

[phoomp @ Sep 10th 2008 11:35AM]

@Darkroom
My last 3 computers and all of my MP3 players have been from Apple. My next ones won't.

[kccboy2004 @ Sep 10th 2008 12:03PM]

@Darkroom, Mr Smith,

You have not been taking the pills. You need to come back in for re-indoctrination.

[Aaronage @ Sep 10th 2008 9:59AM]

Hmm iFail :)

I have been running iTunes 8 and well... its a little lame. It crashed twice in the first 5 minutes on my Mac, the new thumb view scrolling is laggy, and Genius is just iTunes store recommendations on steroids :P

Hopefully this is gonna be sorted in the 8.1 update :)

[ricefarmer @ Sep 10th 2008 10:03AM]

Agreed, Genius has been an epic fail. I tried it on Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and I got songs from the White Stripes and Violent Femmes. It really is just a way for Apple to sell you more songs on iTunes.

[Hold McGroin @ Sep 10th 2008 10:16AM]

Weird to hear the Mac folks talking like Windows users: "Well, it should all be fixed in the next patch."

[phoomp @ Sep 10th 2008 11:33AM]

Even as an upsell tool, Genius doesn't seem all that smart if you don't listen to some fairly mainstream music. Genius can't handle any of the indie music I listen to (even the stuff purchased through iTunes).

[kal326 @ Sep 10th 2008 11:52AM]

@Aaronage

I thing iBSOD is more appropriate for this situation.

[r3loaded @ Sep 10th 2008 12:25PM]

Not personally experienced any problems as of yet, running iTunes 8 and iTouch 2.1 on Vista x64. Let's hope it stays that way....

[Major4Play @ Sep 10th 2008 10:02AM]

"No crashes I promise"
Well you can't fault Steve no iPhone crashes.

The worlds best hardware and software maker HA I guess bugs are not just the domain of Windows users.
Mind you I could list ALOT of bugs I've had with Apple products.

[Que Apple Fanboys telling us all off and reminding us we got our 160GB iPods upgraded to 120GB]

[burriot_avatar @ Sep 10th 2008 10:03AM]

I wonder how much testing went into this particular piece of software? I'm guessing none, just like every other crapple release

[ilovepretmocha @ Sep 10th 2008 10:16AM]

well if this was microsoft it would be pointed out repeatly,riduculed.. but somehow its apple and apple can do no wrong as they have fancy adverts and simple front ends to their softwares and did i mention catchy adverts and fancy big "we have a collective large penis's " shops/churches ..hmm appleFail lately ..not impressed as a first time apple owener(3gphone) I'm wondering if the hype surronding apple was all an llusion.. :( do we now have to wait another month for a fix..anyone know?

[Decoy @ Sep 10th 2008 11:22PM]

Hi, I'm a PC
And I'm a Mac. And I'm about to KILL YOU.

[Purple Haze @ Sep 10th 2008 10:04AM]

They should've called it 7.8 and made a rewrite from scratch called 8.0.

It's almost like Vista was, keep stacking on features release after release and after a while it will become too bloated and unstable with shitty performance.

[Carl Vitullo @ Sep 10th 2008 11:44AM]

Well, iTunes has always been bloated and slow for Windows...
I have a 580 song library and scrolling is laggy as balls.

[Mr. Raven @ Sep 10th 2008 10:51PM]

So true, I think Apple peaked with Tiger and the early Macbook Pros and now they are just coasting on the iphone as they complete their transition to a consumer electronics company like Sony and with all of Sony's problems. Typing from a PowerBook so no I am not a hater. And yes as a web designer, photographer I AM a little bitter. What about the Pros?

I am starting to hope that XP will run stably on 8 core notebooks. :(

[DoctaDJones @ Sep 10th 2008 10:08AM]

I think they put the BSOD problem in on purpose so they can make it the topic of the next Mac vs. PC commercial.


And for the streaming issue:
If you're the type that downloads the latest update for iTunes hours after it's released, why wouldn't you do the same for the airport express firmware that's been out for months?

[rvkremer @ Sep 10th 2008 10:11AM]

I installed last night and found the entire experience to be very slow and clunky. I also haven't gotten any good recommendations from Genius that I wasn't already getting from the mini-store, despite being more visually intrusive.

[sheikhness @ Sep 10th 2008 10:22AM]

apple fanboys pwnd

[luke carroll @ Sep 10th 2008 10:15AM]

apple is hardly helping it's reputation at the moment, my iPhone 3g regularly crashes out of safari, google maps and loads of 3rd party apps, my friend installed the newest firmware only for it to stop him from using apps completely (crash to home screen on launch of anything). Now we have itunes not working, mobile me was a complete disaster too.
I've been saying for a while that apple products aren't quite as rosy as everone makes out, everyone else seems to be clocking on now.

[Seb @ Sep 10th 2008 10:48AM]

Works perfect on my 2 Mac...

[Nicky-Larson @ Sep 10th 2008 10:21AM]

WOW. Apple has been blowing so bad lately. Every release to fix a problem comes with another problem for the next release to fix, and so on. Vicious Circle of Death anyone? What is going on at Apple? For real? I mean this is so unlike them. Since the release of iPhone 3G, its been down hill all the way. They need to get it right or the fear of Upgrading to anything will be theirs. Sounds familiar?

[phoomp @ Sep 10th 2008 11:38AM]

My iPod Touch is still sitting at 1.1.3. I already fear to upgrade my Apple products.

[Rawkstar @ Sep 10th 2008 11:06AM]

The first thing I did after installing iTunes 8 was stream a Genius playlist to Aiport Express and IT WORKED FLAWLESSLY.

[Chris in CA @ Sep 10th 2008 12:25PM]

The first thing I did after not downloading iTunes 8 was synch my ATT Tilt over the air (Exchange stuff only) and the rest via bluetooth- it worked fine. I was concerned about my streaming, so I remoted into my WHS and it was still working fine! I downloaded songs over WiFi and listened to them on my bluetooth headphones. I realized I had vista running on at least a couple computers, so I remoted into those as well- no BSODS- ever!
I figured since the posts have turned to stuff actually working, I should fill you in.

UPDATE: OMG, the doorknob still works! This is a red-letter day!

[lab @ Sep 10th 2008 10:23AM]

multiple crashes,Ive had that too ,sometimes only a ahard reboot(home button and switch-on button held for 10+ sec) did the job of booting up some of my apps :( such a shame..all that hoo haa show yesterday -'look at us how amazing we are at coming up with new ways to steal your money :called genius' (as if patch updates for $9.99 isnt enough of a joke) can you imagine if microsoft news psoted one engadget had the headline " vista bsod with crysis fixed .. only $9.99 new features added ,soudn now works! apps start up , and your pc can now log off safely" .. blah furior with a side portion of wee drizzled salad would be the meal of that day! I hope they have a big announcement to say sorry and this evenign there will be a fix !!

[tony c @ Sep 10th 2008 10:23AM]

I have A Touch and I am running Itunes 8 on a Windows XP Media center edition with NO problems at all.

[speedbump781 @ Sep 10th 2008 10:35AM]

I like Apple products and I think my Vista has ran great since I installed it very early. But one of the first things someone said when I got BSOD with my iPod touch is "that's windows for ya". Apparently not the case.

[konshuss @ Sep 10th 2008 10:43AM]

notice how it's really easy to bash microsoft AND use their products? it just rolls right off, no big deal.

notice how this cavalier attitude is almost never seen by a mac user? 'no no, that wasn't an error.. it's ok it'll be fixed, i have faith.. oh it's so shiny! screw you i can run windows too!'

quit grasping for your saviour corporation to make everything better. they all suck and the sooner people quit being such blind fanboys the sooner we can all get along and make fun of everything. pussies.