iTunes won't open - uh oh

soundhoundsoundhound
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
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!!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    How does it not open?... does the icon just bounce forever ?... does it quit bouncing but iTunes doesn't open?... Do you get any sort of message that iTunes has "quit unexpectedly" (or any other message)?



    Odds are that you haven't lost the data ...
  • Reply 2 of 7
    soundhoundsoundhound Posts: 134member
    The icon bounces for a while and then an error message comes up:



    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????
  • Reply 3 of 7
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    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.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    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.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    soundhoundsoundhound Posts: 134member
    I didn't want to have to recreate all my playlists. So I did this:



    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.







    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    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.



  • Reply 6 of 7
    rokcet scientistrokcet scientist Posts: 962member
    Why not simply restore iTunes (from TimeMachine) to the state just prior to when it started its strange behavior?
  • Reply 7 of 7
    soundhoundsoundhound Posts: 134member
    I think that's what I did, sort of. I restored the library files. Do you mean than if I'd restored the app itself that would have restored the library files as well?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rokcet Scientist View Post


    Why not simply restore iTunes (from TimeMachine) to the state just prior to when it started its strange behavior?



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