Apple Software Update - Error occures while trying to download

A number of people seem to be getting silent failure of the iTunes installer and I don't know a solution.

If you are intersted in a little experiment and you are computer literate, you could try the following.

Download and save a copy of the installer from:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

I assume you have tried this aready and it did not run.

Open a cmd Window – Start>>RUN CMD
Drag iTunesSetup.exe to command window to get full path
Then after it type a space then copy& paste the following text:
/l*v C:\log.txt

The installer will create a log file c:\log.txt

Take a look in the log file with Wordpad and see if you can see any failure messages towards the end of the file.

I do not know if I will be able to make anything of any faiure message, but it might help.

Did you manage to open the command window and run the installer from it?

I am not clear if you succeeded in doing that as instructed.

If you did, open My Computer and double click on your c: drive.

Scroll down past the folders and you should find some files. If it worked you should find log.txt. Try opening it with wordpad.

I don't know if I will be able to make anything of the error, but if not we could try emailing the log to Apple.

If you are not comfortable doing this kind of thing with the CMD window, I could try it with someone else.

Another place you can look for error messages in in your even viewer.
Control Panel>>Adninistative tools>>Event viewer.

It is best to look immediately after trying an install so that any message is at the top.

OK lets have one last go.

Download the iTunes installer and save the file on your PC. The desktop is an easy place to put it.

Go to Start>>Run, then type CMD.
A black window should open up.
Drag iTunessetup.exe into the cmd window. You should see appear there with a long path in front of it.

Type a space, then copy and paste the following line into the cmd window.

/l*v C:\log.txt

The text should appear after iTunessetup.exe spearated by a space.

Press return with the cursor in the cmd window after the pasted text to run the installer.

This should create the log file.

OK, in that case, it sounds as though the installer doesn't start at all, so we can't even get a log file. Very strange.
As a matter of interst, what size is the installer file you have and also the version number? You should be able to see this by hovering the pointer over the file in Windows Explorer.

Have you tried downloading the installer from FileHippo?
http://filehippo.com/download_itunes/

It would be intersting to see if that worked.

Also have you had a look in the Event Viewer as I suggested in an earlier post.

Is anything else installing on the PC at the moment, metaza?

For example, are Windows Updates downloading and installing for you?

At least we have some sort of error message from iTunes setup, unfortunately I don't know what it means.

You are logged on as an adminstator are't you, I didn't ask before. Do you have another account you could try installing from?

There are a couple of other things I would like you to try.
Empty Your Windows Temp directory. The following article tells you how towards the bottom of the page under: *Empty your Temp directory and restart*
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1926

Does that allow the install to go through?

It would be intersting to see if the stand alone QUicktime installer works on your system, I still wonder if you have a more general problem with isntalls.
You can download from the following apge, you want the version WITHOUT iTunes.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html

I forgot to mention in my previous post, have you tried swtiching off virus checking when you install?

If you recently installed Windows, I wonder how you did that. Did you have a Windows disk or did you do a system restore from a recovery partition. A lot of suppliers do this rather than provide a Windows disk.

You are using XP as in your sig rather than vista?

I am wondering if your install was incomplete in some way. You didn't mention if you tried to install the latest Quicktime. It would be intersting to know if that installer works. Also have you installed any other software since reinstalling Windows and were there any problems?

We could also check to see if you have the latsest Windows installer.
Go to Add/Remove programs, and have a look at your Windows Installer entry.
Does it say "Windows Installer 3.1 (KB893803)"?

I have seen several queries about you problem lately, and no obvious solution has been found, I will see if I can interest Apple in the porblem as we are not having much luck.