Lairds Computer Services

If your iTunes seems to be very slow to backup your iPhone/iPod/iPad, and seems to have other errors such as the ping bar at the side not showing up, then try the following.

Open up an administrative command prompt, and type the following:

netsh winsock reset

And then reboot the machine.  Once the machine reboots you may find that your iTunes now backs up at a far more reasonable rate.

What the command does is reset the layered service providers listed for winsock usage in the registry.  These provide an interface between windows and the application and can get corrupted from time to time.