My iTunes won't open!

[Meredith28]

ok, so i'm not extremely tech savvy but a couple days ago my iTunes just stopped opening. At first i thought it was just because my battery was low so i charged my computer, when it didn't work again I restarted it, then I shut it off for a few hours. I did a full update software installation and still nothing, Then I tried downloading the new itunes version, it said everything installed fine, but i when i went to find the new icon in my apps, it wasn't there it was the old app and it STILL wouldn't open. When i went to apple's website they said to "recreate" my itunes, so i followed the instructions there but on step. 6 it says open itunes... I can't.. any tips you guys can give me or someone knows how to fix this??

[Turboladdade]

Does it bounce in the dock when you try to open it? Like so:

Screen shot 2009-11-06 at 1.40.51 PM.png (66.32KiB)Viewed 34198 times

[Meredith28]

yes, it bounces. sometimes more than others. like when i first try to open it it will bounce 3 to 4 times but the more i try it bounces once and quits. also there's no warning message or quit message.

[Turboladdade]

Hold down Command and then click it again. It will reveal itself in the Finder. Is the location where you expect (ie the Applications folder)?

[Meredith28]

yea, its in the apps folder

[Turboladdade]

Well, here's two things you might want to try.

First, not a solution, but perhaps can shed more light on the problem... go to System Preferences, click on "Accounts" and create a brand new user account. Switch to this new account and see if you can launch iTunes. If you can, then we can isolate the problem as being corrupt settings or library or something on your account only, rather than the entire computer.

Additionally, you can try quitting all programs and repairing disk permissions. Go to Applications -> Utilities and launch Disk Utility. Select your computer's hard drive and click the button that says "Repair Permissions" and let it finish. Restart and try again.

[Meredith28]

OK, i created a new account and it work in that one. i also repair the disk utilities and restarted it, but no luck opening my itunes still

[Turboladdade]

OK, now try this... to see if the problem is your music library, quit iTunes if it is running, go to your Music folder located inside your home folder. Rename the "iTunes" folder something like "iTunes_Backup" and then relaunch iTunes. If it launches successfully it will create a new iTunes folder. If this works then something is messed up with your music folder. If this still doesn't work, delete any new folders iTunes creates and restore "iTunes_Backup" to its original name.

[Meredith28]

by relaunch do you just mean try to open it again?

[Turboladdade]

Yeah... it has to be not running for the renaming of the folder to take effect.

[Meredith28]

it tried to open, but didn't again.

[Turboladdade]

Alright, be sure to make your iTunes_Backup folder its original name again.

Now, in your Home folder again, go to Library/Preferences and find all the files that start out "com.apple.itunes" and drag them to your Desktop. I have four of them. This will basically force iTunes to create new preferences. Launch iTunes again see if it helps.

Note this is your Home folder, as in Home (your username)/Library/Preferences... NOT Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences.

[Meredith28]

ok, i'm going to have to come back to this, i have to be somewhere. thanks for all your help so far and hopefully it works.

[Meredith28]

ok, i dragged them to the desktop and tried relaunching still didn't work, so i restarted that didn't work either..

[Turboladdade]

Hmm... well so far we've eliminated the application itself, your user preferences and your user iTunes library. At this point I'm not at all sure what else it could be. In any case, drag those com.apple.itunes files back to their original location before we move on any further. I'll do some more thinking about this one and see what I can come up with.

EDIT: Just another thought... you said you did download the stand-alone iTunes installer from Apple and ran the installer package?

[Meredith28]

yes, and it said it installed but when i went into my applications folder to find the new version, it wasn't there, just the same icon from my old itunes.

[Turboladdade]

Well, it'll still be the same icon. What happens if you open iTunes directly from the Applications folder instead of from the Dock?

[Meredith28]

same thing, i click on it in the apps folder and it bounces in the dock and quits.

[Turboladdade]

What version of Mac OS X are you running? You can find out by choosing "About this Mac" from the Apple menu. In the window that appears, what does it say for version?

[Meredith28]

Mac OS X
Version 10.4.11