/ My QuickTime file is corrupted. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling, and my iTunes is now not working at all. I have discovered that this has been a problem for a lot of people. I am trying to get all of my iTunes music files moved to my Media Player for Windows, but the files aren’t playing because of the file type. How can I convert these files? And can you suggest a cheap if not free converter program?

My QuickTime file is corrupted. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling, and my iTunes is now not working at all. I have discovered that this has been a problem for a lot of people. I am trying to get all of my iTunes music files moved to my Media Player for Windows, but the files aren’t playing because of the file type. How can I convert these files? And can you suggest a cheap if not free converter program?

Kat Delong Depending on how many songs you have that you want to load up to Media Player, there are a few ways to do it.

Burn Tracks to CD

If you can get into iTunes, the easiest way to move music is to burn it to a CD. There is an option in iTunes to convert your music to MP3 files, but if you click on it from a direct iTunes download, you will get the message: Protected files cannot be converted to other formats. If you burn the music to a CD first, it will convert the music to MP3 files when you open the CD in iTunes. In iTunes:

Go to Edit, then Preferences and then General.
Click on Import Settings, then click Ok.
Right click on a music track and you can convert to MP3.

If you have a lot of music, it will take a lot of CDs to get them converted. In this case, you can do pretty much the same thing with a virtual CD drive such as CD Emulator. You can find CD Emulator here: http://www.ztekware.com/ .

Music Bridge

If you have your iTunes files on your hard drive, you can run a synchronization program called Music Bridge. It does not copy the data, rather it duplicates the meta-data between Media Player and iTunes. Check here: http://jrmwillis.googlepages.com/ and see if that is an option for you.

M4a Software

There is software that says it will copy the contents of your iPod to any folder on your computer. I haven’t used it personally, but I haven’t seen anything negative regarding this software. There is a free trial download here:

http://www.ipod-computer.com/iPod-Transfer/index.html?ad=adsense&gclid=CIKf1-ucuZYCFSJIagod4ih0Kw .

3ivx has software that will let you convert .m4a files for personal use. It has you choose what operating system you are running and then download the program for $19.95. Find that here: http://store.3ivx.com/3ivxStore/ .

Fixing QuickTime

I’m wondering if you fully uninstalled QuickTime before you attempted a reinstall. If you left traces of the original program, it won’t reinstall properly. After you uninstall QuickTime, you need to run the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 . You will select QuickTime from the list of installed applications and then click Ok. This will remove all traces and allow for a clean install of a new version. In the end, this may be the best solution so that you can get iTunes back on your machine and not worry about converting your files.