any way of trimming down itunes?

rjk · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:00

i have itunes, but literally use it because of my iphone

i was wondering if there is a way of cutting it down so it doesnt use quite so many processes

quicktime - i never use this, it can go
bonjour - what is this? why do i need it?

basically i want itunes to do two things

1. play music
2. manage my iphone

i dont want 20 processes to start when i launch windows

would it be better for me to just use winamp and see if there is a plugin for the iphone?

Rroff · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:11

Not aware of any easy way to trim it down

I disable the bonjour, apple mobile device and ipod services after installing, delete QTTask.exe, iPodService.exe, iTunesHelper.exe files and replace them with a blank text document of the same name so that iTunes doesn't try to repair itself... then fire up msconfig to remove any startup entries its added...

Personally I don't have an iphone and only use itunes ocassionally to rent the odd movie or download the odd tune - so its a bit of a pain in the arse all told... obviously if you have an ipod/iphone you'd have to have a couple of those services running but theres absolutely no need for the full whack...

Even with a quad core and plenty of ram if I let every single application add all those extra startup processes and background services my PC would just grind to a halt... really annoys me when developers insist on adding 100s of useless "helper" applications without even the good graces of an option to disable them.

Aegis · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:14

Bonjour is Apple's zero-config networking service and allows various bits of Apple hardware and software to communicate via a LAN - you may not need it for iTunes so try disabling it.

Quicktime - nope - don't need that running in the background - get rid of it.

For iPhone, the only ones you need are iTunesHelper.exe (under startup) and Apple Mobile Device (service) - you may even be able to ditch iTunesHelper - can't recall off hand

Meatball · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:14

You need quicktime unfortunately, iTunes uses it as a decoder. You can disable the background process though

.

As for bonjour, you can turn that off. Read about bonjour here Wikipedia on Bonjour

rjk · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:21

im begining to dislike this phone

its all well and good from a usability point of view

but why must they insist on installing all this fail onto my computer

OrphanBoy · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:24

Have a read of this: I read it recently and describes in detail how to slim down the installer so that you can just install the bits that you want:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=554&page=1&tag=col1;post-554

rjk · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:33

im begining to dislike this phone

its all well and good from a usability point of view

but why must they insist on installing all this fail onto my computer

rjk · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:42

im begining to dislike this phone

its all well and good from a usability point of view

but why must they insist on installing all this fail onto my computer

mrochester · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:49

Get rid of QuickTime and install Quicktime Alternative.

RobH · 22 Oct 2009 at 22:55

I agree with you, I like the iPhone but even on a top end system iTunes feels slow, it's not a smooth experience. There is no excuse for the UI to be slow even when synching with the iPhone, it should remain responsive.

jas72 · 22 Oct 2009 at 23:07

I'm having problems when i do a quick sync sometimes after the sync i'm out and about i get a message that there is no music or vids on my device.

Back home resync and it starts working again. It doesn't wipe the songs it's like a broken sync which seems to sort everything on the next sync. It now means everytime i charge the thing I have to check it hasn't wiped my touch

it is such a pain.

rjk · 22 Oct 2009 at 23:09

RobH said:
I agree with you, I like the iPhone but even on a top end system iTunes feels slow, it's not a smooth experience. There is no excuse for the UI to be slow even when synching with the iPhone, it should remain responsive.

exactly, i see the mac users raving about how efficiant macs are and how the software makes best use of the hardware

but itunes has this horrible way of generating fail on a pc

i would be wary about even using a mac if this was the type of interface i was presented with

dmsims · 23 Oct 2009 at 08:05

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

_Jimlad_ · 23 Oct 2009 at 10:07

i disable in msconfig all apple/itunes programs from startup.. no need to have them load.

if they are not loading at startup your pc should not suffer, however may i add that everytime you update itunes, it will re add itself, im like you and hate the whole thing but need it for my ipod collection!

titaniumx3 · 23 Oct 2009 at 11:40

Not sure about Vista/Win7, but in XP I can disable every startup process it creates using a combination of msconfig and services.msc.

PlumpMonkey · 23 Oct 2009 at 11:40

You can get rid of itunes helper. I have it disabled in mine with no problem. I think its there so it can boot up iTunes automatically when you dock your phone. Its not a great hardship to have to click the itunes icon when you want to sync your phone though!

_Jimlad_ · 23 Oct 2009 at 11:45

yeah in win7/vista >msconfig turn the whole lot off on bootup

Bubo · 23 Oct 2009 at 13:15

Is it possible to install a second copy of windows on the same machine and put all your iphone style resource hogging apps that you only use once in a blue mooon, and only boot into that when you need to?

bledd · 23 Oct 2009 at 13:19

phwoar, triple post, and with lag!

is it too late to send the phone back, and get a HTC Hero?

_Jimlad_ · 23 Oct 2009 at 13:55

Bubo said:
Is it possible to install a second copy of windows on the same machine and put all your iphone style resource hogging apps that you only use once in a blue mooon, and only boot into that when you need to?

you could in win7 pro, load a virtual xp machine and then install itunes that way (in theory)

however turning all the startup stuff off will do the trick