Recently had a customer with a problem on a Windows 7 desktop PC where iTunes would not work correctly. iTunes worked correctly until you tried to access the store, where it would show the message ‘Accessing iTunes Store’ for a while, then just stop.
The customer could listen to and manage his music collection, it was just the store that wouldn’t work.
After checking, he had the latest version (10.4.1 I believe), I tried a few things such as disabling the antivirus software and the firewalls (software & router) as well as flushing DNS, checking hosts file, etc, nothing had any effect.
The customer was also having trouble installing Service Pack 1 for Windows 7, so to bring the computer up to date and to rule that out as a possibility, I ran the Microsoft System Update Readiness Tool, then installed the fully downloaded service pack. After the subsequent patches were installed, iTunes still refused to work.
Also, Safari, Apple’s web browser, was doing exactly the same, no pages would open, despite MSN messenger, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome all operating fine.
After reading a few online discussions on the Apple forums, I found this thread, which hit the jackpot…
They advised to open a Command Prompt with administrative privileges (Start > Programs > Accessories > Right-click ‘Command Prompt’ and choose ‘Run as Administrator’).
Then type in the following command:
netsh winsock reset
Reboot the computer and iTunes/Safari should work… (I can’t guarantee that will fix it for you, but it worth a try if you are having this problem!)
The command repairs the Winsock2 library, which is heavily responsible for making network connections on your computer. With a corruption in the library, problems like this happen.
Microsoft have more in depth instructions on repairing Winsock2, with instructions for Windows XP (Vista should be the same as above).
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