gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials » itunes installation

Install iTunes Without Quicktime And Bonjour

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:28:04 +0000

Apple’s iTunes software will only install and run if additional Apple products are installed on the computer system as well. This includes Apple Quicktime and Bonjour. A user installing iTunes will notice that the installer will also install Quicktime and Bonjour on the host system with no obvious option to opt out of their installation.

There is however a way to install iTunes without Apple Quicktime, Bonjour, MobileMe support and iTuneshelper process running at startup. This can be achieved with a custom installer that can be downloaded from the Custom Installers page which contains installers for the English and multi-language versions of iTunes 8.0.2.20 and 8.1.0.52. The only requirement other than running the installer to install iTunes is an installation of Quicktime Alternative and the Quicktime Alternative iTunes add-on which makes the program compatible with iTunes 8.

The correct sequence for installing iTunes without Quicktime and Bonjour would be therefore to install Quicktime Alternative, then the Quicktime Alternative plugin and finally iTunes using the custom installer. The custom installer will skip the installation of aforementioned programs and services. This is great news for users who do not want to have those programs running in the background or those who prefer to run the Quicktime Alternative program instead of the original.

The iTunes customer installer is only available for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It comes as a msi file that allows a silent installation with the switches /qb /norestart.

Fix The Folder iTunes Cannot Be Found Or Created

Martin Brinkmann — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:24:22 +0000

Starting iTunes after a recent installation returned the error message “The folder iTunes cannot be found or created”. It was referring to the My Music directory that is usually located in the My Documents folder on the partition containing the operating system. The iTunes software creates an iTunes folder in the My Music directory on first start and if that directory is not accessible it will throw the error message and fail to load.

Since this error is related to the My Music folder it is important to check the directory path of that folder in the Windows Registry. This is best done by using the shortcut [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting the [enter] key.

The fastest way of location the two locations that contain path information for the My Music folder is to use the search by pressing [F3] and entering [My Music] in the search box. A click on [Find Next] will start the search and reveal the two locations.

The test computer system did not have path information listed at all. This can be changed by double-clicking the My Music key in the Registry and changing the path to an valid path manually.

The two Registry locations that list the My Music path are the following two:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Make sure both point to a valid path on the system. Once the path has been changed iTunes will create the iTunes folder in that location and start up without this error message.