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Paul asked: “I get this message every once in a while to update iTunes – new version or whatever. I download it, then I try to install it and it fails every time. It did that again this morning and it did the same thing. I got to thinking… hey, I took my DVD drive out and put another 1TB hard drive in there. But I’m thinking iTunes maybe won’t install without a DVD drive in there, I don’t know.”
iTunes probably doesn’t care if you have a DVD drive. The reason we say that is because we can’t think of a single Apple computer that still comes with a DVD drive.
Apple has spent the last 4 or 5 years phasing out optical disc drives on all their machines and by now they seem to have completed the process, most people just haven’t noticed because, why would they? Who uses optical drives?
Apple’s support website has a short series of tips for people who are having trouble installing or updating iTunes.
- Apple recommends that you log in as an administrator, if you’re a regular user you may not have enough privileges to alter some directories that the installer needs to modify.
- That you install the latest Windows updates.
- And finally, that you run the installer as an administrator.
To run the installer as an administrator, you can right click on the file and click on “run as administrator”. If all else fails, you can try to completely uninstall iTunes and re-install it, some file may have gotten corrupted somehow over time and you may just need to let the installer replace it completely with a fresh installation.