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Issue with iTunes freezing on Windows systems

Jeff Phipps

Back in May I moved the company over from Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 to Sohpos Central.  We've had very few problems with Sophos and it feels like we have better protection than with the Symantec product.

Recently, about 3 weeks ago, we've started having issues with computers freezing and becoming non-responsive. The first system was a newly formatted Windows 7 system and I tracked it down to an iTunes issue.  iTunes would start to use up 12% of the CPU and after a couple of minutes nothing would respond and you'd have to hold the power button to get the system to shutdown. About a week later I had a handful of our brand new HP Z440's with Windows 10 start doing the same thing.  At first I thought it was the version of iTunes everyone was on since they were all on the same version, 12.6.1.25.  I have a Z440 also that I've been running for the past year or so with no issues at all and I was running an older version of iTunes so I figured that was the problem but here recently I have started to have the same problem on my computer. iTunes starts to use 12% of the CPU and then it freezes.

After some research I found a work around where you set iTunes to open as an administrator and iTunes opens and stays open without freezing. Since I started having the issue on my system I wanted to try a couple of things to see if I could track down this issue since it seemed to start out of the blue after working great on all of our systems for the past couple of months.  The first thing I did was shutdown Sophos since that was the last major thing I put on my system and it ran for a couple of hours without freezing which it normally doesn't last more than 10 or 15 minutes without freezing.

Has anyone else seen this issue or know what to exclude to fix this Sophos/iTunes issue?

Thanks



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  • 0

    Hi,

    I wonder if you're seeing the same issue mentioned here:
    https://community.sophos.com/products/sophos-home/f/sophos-home-general/92485/sophos-home-beta-1-2-0-and-itunes-12-6-1-windows-10-cu-saving-library-endlessly-50-cpu-used-by-itunes-exe

    If you disable Cryptoguard protection via policy, I assume you have InterceptX, does the issue go away?

    I wonder if the home product is ahead of the Central client with regard to HMPA.

    Regards,

    Jak

  • 0 in reply to jak

    Hey Jak,

     

    It's not exactly the same issue.  We don't see anything about "Saving Library". Everything here seems to be running fine, working in files and listening to iTunes then all of the sudden things stop responding to the point where you can't do anything except hold the power button to shut the system down.

    I did turn off Cryptoguard for the policy that my system is in and verified on my system that it was indeed off.  This was about an hour ago and I have not had any issues so this appears to have fixed this issue.

    I guess my next question is what can I do to get Cryptoguard turned back on and not have this issue. Cryptoguard was one of the main selling points of the Sophos product so I want to take advantage of it.

     

    EDIT: As a follow up to this I have added itunes to both the Exploit Mitigation Exclusions and the Global Scanning Exclusion and it still locked up.

    Thanks

  • 0 in reply to Jeff Phipps

    I would suggest dropping Support an email to find out if the change made to Home is to be put into the Central client any time soon if that does indeed help.

    Regards,

    Jak

  • 0

    We use Symantec Endpoint Protection and Sophos InterceptX. We have also experienced the same issue plus one more. About two weeks ago a few systems started locking up but only when iTunes was open. I have also seen the "Saving Library" message described. iTunes CPU would get around 30% and stay there. It was usually only a matter of minutes before you had to power cycle. This problem was only reported from 3 out of 300 users (CEO (of course), mine, and marketing). I have been troubleshooting without any success.

    Last week however, we had three reports of IE 11 hanging at a white window. My desktop tech determined that uninstalling Sophos InterceptX fixes the problem. Strange thing is it won't uninstall normally, he has to manually do it. What is more concerning is that two more users have now reported the issue. Disabling CryptoGuard is really not an option since that's the only reason we bought the product.

    I just uninstalled InterceptX on my system so we will see if the iTunes issue goes away.

    I am starting to get concerned that I could end up with a few hundred systems that can't open Internet Explorer. We have a ticket opened with Sophos support and have requested escalation and some urgency.

    If a solution is provided I will update.

    If Sophos is in fact to blame I would have to believe there have been many reports and am surprised that a serious issue like this has not been addressed already. I also found a SpiceWorks user with exact issues. Problem seems to be expanding and hope Sophos gets a handle on it ASAP.

  • 0

    Hi Jeff,

    I have had this problem with my own Windows 10 PC.  I hadn't identified the freezing problem as a Sophos issue, but found that it stopped after I had uninstalled all Apple software.

    A colleague yesterday told me that he had had the same problem, and that it was definitely Sophos-related.  I've asked him to try your "run as Administrator" trick and see if it works for him. 

    So far I haven't heard of any other PC users having a similar problem - and we have 250 PCs, many of which have iTunes installed.

    Ah - my colleague has come back and told me that he's uninstalled iTunes too and neither of us want to risk putting it back just now...

    He was pretty sure that there was something Java-related going on though, which might indicate why other iTunes users aren't experiencing this.

    Any further news on this issue anyone?  Googling would indicate that it's not currently a widespread problem.

  • 0 in reply to Chris Weir

    We experienced the same iTunes issue. It also only affected a small number of our users. At the same time we have been fighting an IE 11 issue (white screen and lock up) with Sophos that was forcing us to disable Sophos on a few system each day. The IE issue is currently at level three support who work with the developers. They just provided new dll's a few days ago but the problem still exists.

    During the course however I discovered that if you enroll the computers having the issue in the "Early Access Program" (Click your name in the right corner of the web portal) and install this version the iTunes issue goes away. Of course this version is not a general release yet but for the four users with the issue I decided to go with it. Hope that helps. 

    Charlie

  • 0 in reply to Charles Brown

    We are also currently experiencing the iTunes freezing issue with a handful of our x64 Win7pro/ent clients.  In our testing, when iTunes is open and running with MS Office appls on a pc that has a Sophos central policy with cryptoguard enabled, it seems to act as though it is gradually consuming resources until all applications become unresponsive and the only way to fix it is a hard reboot. We originally thought it was a MS Office issue since most affected users were working in Excel or Outlook which would 'freeze' and appear to be the source of the issue. After much troubleshooting in Microsoft updates, we realized every affected client was also running iTunes (and many other clients running the same cryptoguard enabled policy were not affected). Starting iTunes by enabling it to 'run as administrator' does not solve the issue for us.  

     

    It sounds like the early release option might provide a fix which also suggests a more permanent fix is on the way. We have not tested this yet and are advising affected clients to keep iTunes closed in the interim.

  • 0 in reply to Charles Brown

    Thanks Charles,

    May try the "Early Access" option if I come across nother instance of this issue.  So far, still only 2 PCs out of around 100 with iTunes installed have shown this behaviour.

    Hopefully this will prove a successful fix and be incorporated into the standard release.  And hopefully Sophos will let us know when it is!

    Cheers,
    Chris.

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