Hello Vista, iTunes 7.0.2 / Windows Vista Hack
I have been waiting to upgrade my work laptop to Windows Vista ever since RTM came out. I have it running at home and it’s great. The only issue that I had was that I could not get iTunes to behave and for a while the songs that I purchased from the iTunes store could not be accessed in any way because iTunes would not authorize my computer and kept giving me a cryptic error. Well, a co-worker gave me a handy book about Vista and its features and I started reading about the Program Compatibility Wizard, which allows you to choose executable files and set them to run as if they were in older Windows Operating Systems. This includes the following:
- Windows 95
- NT 4 (SP5)
- Windows 98/Me
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP (SP2)
Here is how the Wizard Works.
First step: Start the Wizard. This is not as easy as it might seem. Open the Program Compatibility Wizard by clicking the Start button > Control Panel > Programs >Use an older program with this version of Windows.
Second Step: The Wizard Starts Click Next on the Welcome to the Program Compatibility Wizard Dialog Box.
Third Step: I chose the I want to Locate the program manually option here. If you choose the I want to choose from a list of programs, it will search your machine for a list of executables to formulate the list. This takes a while, which is why I took the third option. Obviously, click Next to move to the next step.
Fourth Step: Locate the program. Click Browse and navigate to it. In the case of iTunes it would be c:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe. Click Next once you have selected it.
Fifth Step: Choose Compatibility Mode. In this case I selected Windows XP (Service Pack 2), which works perfectly. Click Next once you select it.
Sixth Step (Not Necessary for iTunes): You are able to select some specific display settings in this step. I chose none of these for iTunes. Click Next.
Seventh Step: You can now choose to Run this program as an administrator. I turned User Account Control Off on my home machine, so this is grayed out for me and will automatically do this. If you still have UAC On, then I would select this. It would avoid an additional warning message every time you launch the program. You are already going to get one. Either Select it or don’t. Either way, click Next.
Eighth Step: Almost done. You will now review the settings and Click Next to have the Wizard test them.
If you are running Aero Glass, your screen will flicker and you will get this message:
Vista will revert to Windows Basic, then you will get this message:
Click OK and iTunes will start.
Navigate in iTunes to your Purchased music and click Play. You will we asked to login to iTunes to Authorize the computer and it will authorize and play the song.
Ninth Step: If things worked, select Yes, set this program to always use these compatibility settings and click Next.
The wizard will flash a dialog box like this for about 4 seconds.
It will then present you with this screen. You can either send the information to Microsoft or not. Select one or the other and click Next.
Last Step: Click Finish. The Wizard closes and you’re done.
Without this Compatibility Wizard, you would be dead in the water with your purchased music until Apple releases the Vista-friendly version of iTunes. For now, this will work and I am happy. Once Apple releases the new version with Vista Support, you will simply run the Wizard again and during the Fifth Step, choose Do not apply a compatibility mode and finish the Wizard just the same.
