Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Installing iTunes 7 on 64-bit Windows Vista

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Installing iTunes 7 on 64-bit Windows Vista

Posted in Musings.

We're going on a trip tomorrow so I needed to get my iPod setup quickly and sync'ed beforehand. However, I hadn't put iTunes on my new Vista 64-bit system, and I was shocked to see the iTunes installer fail to install saying "cannot find Quicktime." A little file system sniffing solved the problem.

Since both apps are 32-bit apps running on 64-bit Vista, they are each installed to "c:\program files (x86)." Apparently iTunes has hardcoded "c:\program files" so iTunesSetup goes looking for QuickTime in "c:\program files\quicktime" rather that where it really ended up.

So, before I ran iTunesSetup again, I needed to "lie" to the installed by making a directory link to where QuickTime actually got installed.

Hit the Start Menu, type cmd.exe and Right Click then choose Run as Administrator.
Type
md "c:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime"
Type
mklink /d "c:\Program Files\QuickTime" "c:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime"to create a link FROM Program Files\Quicktime to where it really is. Note this is all one line.
Install iTunes by running iTunesSetup.exe and you're all set.

Ridiculous that I should have to do this. Apple really doesn't make it easy on Windows users. Heh, I wonder why not? :)

UPDATE: Nick has a good writeup on this issue with more detail, so check it out!

Posted at 2007-08-16 12:16 AM by Scott
Comments [22]
Permalink

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 11:50:28 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I've had to use that mklink for some programs as well... It's a handy tool

Javache

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 11:54:20 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Quite why Microsoft decided to split Program Files into x86 and x64 is beyond me. As to why they decided that x86 should be the one to move is stranger yet for a company normally obsessed with backward compatibility.

[)amien

Damien Guard

Thursday, August 16, 2007 12:22:07 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Quite a mess. That's the price of windows users trying to get a little bit of apple flavour.

alexandru savu

Thursday, August 16, 2007 12:32:38 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Damien - Maybe because 64-bit is the way going forward? I'm not sure, but I'll ask and find out.

Scott Hanselman

Thursday, August 16, 2007 2:03:10 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Strange you had that issue Scott as I've installed iTunes quite a few times on my Vista x64 machine and never had an issue. That said, it sometimes failed with that error when I was running another setup at the same time. I think that was because the QuickTime install silently failed as another program was being installed, so then iTunes bombed.

Rich Mercer

Thursday, August 16, 2007 4:28:52 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Apple does explicitely say iTunes is compatible with the 32-bit version of Vista:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Dave Murdock

Thursday, August 16, 2007 5:23:47 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I installed iTunes 7.3 (or whatever the latest version is) on my father-in-law's 64-bit Vista box a couple of days ago without any problems. Did you install QuickTime first or just iTunes?

Bryant Likes

Thursday, August 16, 2007 5:31:55 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Two folders, because conceivably you may want to install both platform versions of a program for many reasons.

One of the first tests I run on other people's code is to install to a different drive and a different folder as well as change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir to something other than C:\Program Files\.

It's even more amusing to install applications on a system without a C: drive.

You be surprised how many applications reply on Program Files being "C:\Program Files" and that a C: exist!

Peter Ritchie

Thursday, August 16, 2007 5:34:41 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

"Ridiculous that I should have to do this. Apple really doesn't make it easy on Windows users. Heh, I wonder why not? :)"

As Dave pointed out, Apple /does/ try and make it easy for Windows users by letting people know it's only for Vista 32bit :)

Diego

Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:01:58 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Just FYI, another good use for symbolic links and iTunes is to allow for a shared iTunes library among multiple user accounts on one machine. The fact that Apple doesn't have an option to allow for this directly from iTunes is, IMO, also ridiculous.

Kevin

Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:15:12 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

That's a pet peeve of mine. Anyone who hard-codes "Program Files" into their app should be shot...
With a bean bag gun. I'm not advocating murder.

Haacked

Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:25:10 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Yet another thing that demonstrates just how bad the programming in iTunes for Windows is. They need to fire their Windows development team and start over. And maybe this time, you know, they can actually implement WPF or something to give us smoother eye candy? Doubtful. And maybe they can rewrite their library code so that it doesn't choke past 8k songs..

Blah blah blah.

Nicholas

Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:38:54 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Odd, iTunes installed just fine for me on 64-bit Vista. The app thats really giving me trouble is Rhapsody, who's new DRM isn't compatible with 64-bit. Grrr!

monsur

Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:54:46 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I talked to Raymond Chen and he explained that Program Files always has *native* binaries. Even on mips and alpha, so this makes sense for x64.

Scott Hanselman

Friday, August 17, 2007 7:01:38 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I can't seem able to install Itunes at all, and i think it's down to this problem. Once upon a time, i installed itunes but removed it since I wasn't using it. At that point, I had quicktime also.

I think opted for quicktime alternative, and have not been able to install the newest version of itunes since it crashes the moment the installer starts.

I will give this a shot and see whether it works.

Thanks!

Vivek Aggarwal

Friday, August 17, 2007 8:41:19 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I installed iTunes on my wife's new Vista laptop and the CD/DVD drive stopped working. Uninstalled and bingo, working again.

Jeff the Great

Saturday, August 18, 2007 3:00:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

This, to me, speaks poorly of Apple's development team. Apple's approach to operating systems is to develop software to run only on their proprietary hardware. Perhaps they've grown a little sloppy in the compatibility department as a result. With Mac OS, Apple never wrestled with the challenge of writing portable code and now they're failing pretty handily!

I'm currently running Vista 64-bit, and though I was able to install successfully, I haven't been able to synch my iPod for 6 months!

Colin

Monday, August 20, 2007 2:23:11 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

All my contacts(outlook) and media are on my x64 box.

I activated my iPhone and set up my account with my wife's Powerbook. I get home and woot i cant sync! 599$ and i cant use it with x64? what a hunk of junk.

Brian Leahy

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:13:04 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

"You must be assimilated."

Welcome to the world of Apple. In the bad 'ol days prior to OS X, anytime the operating system got upgraded, you were lucky if you could get any old applications to run on the new operating system.

Count your blessings. :-)

Phillip

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 4:01:10 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

So like the future of mobile devices is incompatable with the future of home computing because of a n00b programming anti-pattern? Hard coded paths?

Brian Leahy

Monday, October 08, 2007 12:22:09 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Cant get iTunes or QuickTime installed. Did all the mklink stuff correctly and still get "installer has encountered an unexpected error.....code is 278" Any suggestions?

Rob Hraback

Thursday, October 11, 2007 9:57:52 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I'm hardly a technical person - but I have Vista ultimate 64 bit. and I can install itunes but it says I can't download cd's or burn cd's. I've written apple and had no response. can anyone help me? thanks