iTunes 7 Error - iTunes Unable to Browse Album Covers On This Computer

Update -  If you are having this issue, please read the rest of this post plus the comments at the bottom of the post.

I just upgraded to itunes 7. I'm on Windows XP by the way.  I was really excited to try out the new feature, Cover Flow which according to Apple "With Cover Flow, you can flip through your digital music and video collection just as you would CDs."

The update seemed to go fine. I then selected "Music" in my Library and hit the
Cover Flow button. Much to my surprise, I got the error listed below "iTunes is unable to browse album covers on this computer."

I googled, searched blogs, searched Apples support and found nothing. Then I remembered I had set my video card to disable hardware acceleration. Sure enough, when I cranked up my hardware acceleration, iTunes worked fine. I'm blogging this here because I know tons of you musicians out there use iTunes and this post could save you hours of chasing your tail - especially since the error is not very clear that the issue is related to your video settings.

Possible remedies:

• Enable hardware acceleration
• Use 32-bit True Color

These settings can be accessed by , Right clicking on your desktop, select the "Settings Tab". Select 32-bit.  To turn on hardware acceleration, click advanced.

Then click the "Troubleshoot" tab and slide  the Hardware acceleration slider to the right.

Update to my original post:

According to  http://completelygeeked.com/, two other issues might cause this:

Possibility 1: QuickTime is out of date...

Possibility 2: Video Driver is out of date...

CompletelyGeek also sites this forum on Apple.

See comments link below for even more discussion about this issue.

Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
www.markmoshermusic.com

Copyright 2006, Newecho Productions, LLC

Comments

[bounder]

brill! been searching for something to correct this all day. pity my PC is a little to slow to make the best of this feature, it looks great on my mac.

[reid]

Users might also need to upgrade their display driver. That's what worked for me.

[Jaggo]

Brilliant !

Thx mate =]

[Omar Kholeif]

This does not work for me. I still get this error message even though my hardware acceleration has always been on full. I am running the latest version of Windows and so I do not know what to do. I need this feature. Can you please help?

[Mark Mosher]

I just updated the post to reflect some new info from Reid. New info is in red.

[02befree]

Maybe to fine tune this, add an extra step to change to 32 bit.

exit iTunes then:

1. Start - Settings - Control Panels - Display
2. Click Settings tab
3. Select 32 Bit
4. Click Advanced button. A dialog pops up.
5. Click Troubleshoot tab
6. There should be a slider for hardware acceleration. Select Full

Click OK buttons to close and save your changes.

Good luck. This worked for me.

[ja]

any more news on this? I've tried all of this, but to no avail.

[M Kennedy]

Doesn't work for me either. I had the album covers working when I first downloaded 7 but now nothing works and all the settings are as suggested above.

[Mark Mosher]

Anyone else got an ideas for M Kennedy or Jaggo?

[JHM]

I have tried all recommended fixes with no success. I am running XP and video is limited to 24 bits. How do I update video driver? Tks

[Mark Mosher]

In the last post, someone asked how they update their video driver? Typically, you'd visit the web site of the vendor in question, find you model and grabethe new driver.

Many lower cost systems implement drivers on their motherboards. If that's the case, then visit your pc manufacturer's site (like HP.com, or dell.com...), find the support page, find your model. They should have a downloads sections for driver updates.

For those who have add-on video cards in PCI slots, visit your video card manufacters web site (like http://www.ati.com/, http://www.nvidia.com/).

Once you download the driver, follow the instructions from the manufacturer on installing.

[panicstyle]

Thank. I'm fixed this problem. My case is Possibility 2: Video Driver is out of date... I have ThinkPad T40 with ATI Mobility Radeon 7500.

[gentrysama]

ok, i had this problem, drivers were updated, quicktime updated, yada yada, still same problem - when i'd click "tv shows" i got the same crash splash as everyone. i checked my graphics accelerator and it was on high, but i noticed my "color quality" was for some reason set only to 16 bit. i changed this to 32 bit and voila! works great, and honestly looks very cool. i hope this might help someone!

[Danny Aravena]

I had the same problem on windows 2000. Changed to 32 bit true color and issue went away

[Boo]

THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU JUST SAVED ME $100, I LOVE YOU!!

[johnny rock and roll]

the easiest and most pain free way is to uninstall itunes, then reinstall it. sounds simple but it worked for me after i tried all the mensa candidate techniques i have seen posted.

[Peter Miller]

simply changing to 32 bit did it for me! thanks guys!

[Jim Thorstad]

Thanks so much for this blog. I just reinstalled WinXP on my wife's computer and put iTunes 7 on it and got the same error message. For me hardware acceleration is set to Full after a new install. But Color depth is 16-bit by default and sure enough, just setting it to 32-bit solved the problem!!

[Dan Tepper]

It seems there is another place where 3D can be disabled. here's what fixed it for me (Win 2003 srvr - all latest stuff):

1. Need all latest Drivers, DirectX and 3D Accel enabled (see posts above)

2. From Start Menu, click RUN then type "dxdiag" (no quotes)

3. click the "Display" tab.

4. Make sure "DirectDraw Acceleration", "Direct3D Acceleration" and "AGP Texture Acceleration" are ENABLED

I did this and Cover Flow works beautifully.

As a developer, would be nice if Apple caught this more gracefully and provided some kind of user feedback.

-Dan Tepper

[jon]

None of the remedies I could find on the Internet worked except turning down the screen resolution down to 1024 x 768. Then cover flow worked fine