iTunes Install on Windows 2003
For some reason, Apple has stopped supporting iTunes on Windows 2003 and changed their MSI installer to fail. However if you still prefer to run iTunes on your Windows 2003 Server, you can still modify the iTunes installer by using installer tools such as Microsoft Orca (see Microsoft’s Tutorial on how to modify MSI files) or InstEd. Using InstEd, I was able to install iTunes 9 on my Windows 2003 machine.
- First download the iTunes installer from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/.
- Next use WinZip or WinRar to extract the contents of iTunesSetup.exe to a folder.
- Now comes the difficult part, you will need to check each of the .MSI files with InstEd or Orca. Open each file one at a time and look for the LaunchCondition settings. You will need to remove this parameter and its value: ((VersionNT=501 And ServicePackLevel>=2) OR VersionNT>501). Once you do that just Save and Exit.
- With the modified MSI files, now start installing them one at at time. Leave the iTunes.msi for last though. The SetupAdmin.exe can be ignored. You do not need to run that one.
If this was a perfect world, you would now be able to launch iTunes 9 on your machine, but since it is far from perfect, you might be staring at this error message:
The iPod Service service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
To complete the install, leave the error up on the screen and go launch Services.msc, find the iPod Service and open its properties. You will need to add an account with admin rights and then save the changes. Now click Retry on the error and see if it works.
September 28th, 2009 19:11
Hiya,
For what it’s worth, once InstEd is open, you can drag all the msi files onto the InstEd window at once and it will open them all in tabs. It saves a bit of clicking.
Neil
October 12th, 2009 22:21
At this area :
I couldn’t get it to work here and it keeps popping out my visual studio 2008 for debugging. Any ideas what is wrong?
October 13th, 2009 15:17
You probably need to try the administrator account to see if it works. As for Visual Studio, you probably have the debugger installed from that and that is why that is coming up.
November 19th, 2009 12:43
I also used InstEd to remove the Service IpodService.exe from being required to run. It was throwing a different memory access error. Maybe it’s because my profile has Administrator rights but is not called Administator.
November 29th, 2009 00:20
Thanks it worked fine for me after a lot of trouble
December 3rd, 2009 15:05
Hey, u did it buddy…. it worked for me……. thanks alot…
January 13th, 2010 05:19
tryed starting “iPod Service” service with admin user (local & active directory) but did not managed to make it work
EventLog – “Event Type: Error
Event Source: MsiInstaller
Event Category: None
Event ID: 11920
Date: 13/01/2010
Time: 12:12:31
User: xxx(I’ve changed this)
Computer: xxx(I’ve changed this)
Description:
Product: iTunes — Error 1920. Service ‘iPod Service’ (iPod Service) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.
“
January 15th, 2010 20:47
Tried it all. Multiple times… Got all the way to the “iPod Service”screen of death. Don’t even use an iPod.
This needs to be fixed. I don’t know what to try next. If it won’t work, I will have to switch phones, and if I switch phones, I switch carriers. If I do, twelve company phones go with me…
January 24th, 2010 20:52
Yeah, this doesnt work at all. Followed the directions without a hitch until it came to the part of enabling the service. I even went in and modified the permissions for the ipodservices.exe and gave everything under the sun the rights to run it. Still no go. There is a fundamental step missing that is not covered in this tutorial.. It will not start the service no matter who the user is(even Admin).. I see some other guys got it to work after claiming “a lot of trouble” Why not tell people what you did, instead of leaving some unhelpful vague comment like that you got it working… Great for you, but frustrating for others..
If anyone has some siggestions it would be wonderful to know!
February 3rd, 2010 05:20
I did add the user as specified, but iPod services keep getting back to “retry” error. Any suggestions?
March 25th, 2010 11:29
This worked like a charm. Ensured that I had the latest service pack on OS first. Thank you.
April 23rd, 2010 01:18
I try this method from here. It is messy but finally get it working.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9571205
I did just this part.
find setupapi.dll in windows\system32, right clicked and selected “open with”, then I browsed to find iTunes.exe (under program files) and opened the dll with this executable.
The itune will open and finished the installation. Leave it open. Now you can say cancel the installation, but the itune will be stuck and not uninstall. The ipod service is marked to be deleted. (I don’t own ipod, so it is OK)
April 28th, 2010 14:29
Hi Guys,
for those that couldn’t get this to work…
Create a new user, that you are not logged on as, add them to the administrators group, add them to the service. It will grant them logon as service right and click start… then complete the install…
simples..
June 8th, 2010 08:15
install with the latest installer and wait until it complains that it cant start the ipod service. launch task manager and stop the ipod service, itunes, and all msiexecs until the installer disappears. set the ipod service to disabled. run itunes.exe directly from the c:\program files\itunes\ folder