iTunes won't open - uh oh
I was doing several things at once on my iMac (ripping a DVD, on iChat video, etc) and my mac crashed. Now it won't open iTunes. I have a 500 gig music library and hundreds of playlists etc, so I'd hate to have to reinstall iTunes and lose all that. Is that what would happen if I reinstalled iTunes?
I have Time Machine hooked up. Could I go into that and grab an iTunes prefs file from before the crash, and put that in the current system folder? Would that be something to try?
Any help would be much appreciated!!
I have Time Machine hooked up. Could I go into that and grab an iTunes prefs file from before the crash, and put that in the current system folder? Would that be something to try?
Any help would be much appreciated!!
Comments
Odds are that you haven't lost the data ...
The iTunes application could not be opened. An unknown error occured (13010).
I didn't think the actual library files (mp3s, mpegs etc etc) would have been hurt (hope not!) but that the problem might be the program itself or some of it's connected files (prefs, library file etc) might have been damaged????
If you hold down the alt-key while launching, it will give you the option to create a new library. You can make another one and then just drag your music folder into the window and it will index them all again. Make sure your music folder location is set correctly and you can uncheck the copy items to music folder temporarily to avoid any chance of duplicating items.
You might try that (Marvin's idea).
If that doesn't work, you can certainly delete all iTunes files from your Library folder (as well as the app) and start over. Once you get a new installation started, you can use the "Opt-Launch" to point the new instance to your old iTunes data folder and all should show up as it used to be.
I think I solved it without reinstalling (I hope I did) I searched for iTunes, found a folder that seemed to house the itunes related files. (There was nothing in the System Folder called itunes.)
It was this folder: Users/Myname Folder/Music/iTunes. Loose in there were three itunes library files and some smaller ones with the same name as two of them, but smaller and with odd extensions. I'm thinking these were created, or screwed up, by the crash... By going back with Time Machine to just before the crash, I was able to which were the correct files. I took the smaller ones out of the folder, and things seem to work ok now. Whew.
If you hold down the alt-key while launching, it will give you the option to create a new library. You can make another one and then just drag your music folder into the window and it will index them all again. Make sure your music folder location is set correctly and you can uncheck the copy items to music folder temporarily to avoid any chance of duplicating items.
Why not simply restore iTunes (from TimeMachine) to the state just prior to when it started its strange behavior?