Dominik’s Blog

Apple recently came out with iTunes 7.

If you haven’t upgraded yet, don’t go rushing to do so. This version is a bit buggy, to say the least.

For me personally, music just wouldn’t play cleanly anymore: it would be filled with static, jittering and distortion that was a result of iTunes, since playing the exact same MP3s with another player would work fine.

I thus decided to revert to iTunes 6, because I like iTunes and have a lot of useful data in my library (my entire smart playlist set up, several months worth of song ratings, etc.) that I don’t want to have to duplicate in another player. I know Apple will release an iTunes 7 fix soon, but I don’t want to wait.

Step 1: Backup
Back up your iTunes 7 settings, so that you can keep them around in case you want to go back.

Go into your My Documents folder, then your My Music folder. Copy the iTunes folder inside there to somewhere else. That’ll save your settings.

Note: That’s the default location, if you’ve moved things around it’ll be somewhere else. If you need help finding it, search for files ending in .itl on your hard drive.

Step 2: Uninstall iTunes 7
Now, uninstall iTunes 7. Go to your Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, iTunes and hit Uninstall.

Reboot as it asks you to when it’s done.

Step 3: Download iTunes 6.0.5
Download iTunes 6 from Apple:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunes605forwindows.html

Step 4: Install iTunes 6.0.5
Install iTunes 6 by running the installer.

Step 5: Try to run iTunes 6
You should get this error message:
The file "iTunes Library.itl" cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes.

Step 6: Restore your old library
Go back into My Documents/My Music. Now go into the iTunes folder. Rename your iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library.itl.old. Go into the Previous iTunes Libraries folder. Take the newest file (for me this was iTunes Library 2006-09-14.itl) and copy it back up to the iTunes folder. Rename it iTunes Library.itl. Run iTunes 6 and you should be all set, with your library restored.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than losing your library entirely. Plus, since you’ve backed up your iTunes 7 library, when Apple releases an iTunes 7.0.1 you should be able to reverse the procedure above and use your most current library before upgrading to iTunes 7.0.1.

I hope this is helpful to someone :)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Tech, iTunes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.