Windows – Pausing downloads in iTunes on Windows platform

You cannot get iTunes to stop doing this, sadly, and I don't think you can exactly re-implement the Doug's Applescripts solution for expired playlists for Windows - it relies on manually updating each podcast rather than calling update all. And the iTunes COM object does not seem to expose a way to update individual podcasts, only the entire list.

And I am 99% certain that Matthew is incorrect and that refreshing all is not sufficient to bypass the recently listened count. The wperry link will mark the podcast as listened to, which is the same issue as your workaround that you find unacceptable.

I do think, however, that you can workaround this issue by right-clicking and choosing refresh. While that's unnecessary to actually get new episodes when you have periodic updates set, it will reset the clock, as it were, and prevent it from stopping when you don't listen for a while. Whether this is actually any better than just dealing with it as it comes up, however, I don't know.

Essentially, there are two different options you can try - depending on the way you want to use iTunes. I'll be writing this answer for Mac users, but Windows users can probably suss it out using these instructions.

Both options will only require you to click "Store" from the menu bar from within iTunes.

Option One (red) - If you intend on using the Store, you can simply click the "Authorize This Computer..." menu option. This will prompt you for your password and tie your computer and iTunes library to your iTunes account.

Option Two (blue) - If you don't intend on using the Store and would simply like to not see the dialog box prompting for your password, you can click the "Sign Out" menu option.

One of these two things should solve the problem of the persistent password prompt.

Best of luck!