IMac – iTunes on iMac won’t start up after upgrade (error -10699)

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Yesterday I updated iTunes in my iMac running OS X 10.10.3. According to the information in App Store, the new iTunes version is 12.1.2.

Since then iTunes won't start up. If I click on it, there is no response.

I figured that there is probably a known problem with the upgrade, and that this would be fixed in due course. However, I've been monitoring discussions, and there does not seem to be anything else who is having this problem.

Some research I did on how to solve this problem was to trash the iTunes preferences, and to download and re-install iTunes: I did both, but it still won't start up.

Nothing is logged on any error logs as far as I can see. I did a "tail -f /var/log/system.log" in Terminal App and then attempted to start iTunes, no messages were displayed.

When I try and open iTunes from terminal ("open -a iTunes"), I get a message:
"LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed for the application /Applications/iTunes.app with error -10699."

Open With Role sounds as if there might be a permissions problem, I've repaired permissions with Disk Utility, and I've also tried starting iTunes from the command line using sudo, but no luck.

At this stage I've run out of ideas. Anybody else have an idea what I could try?

Best Answer

I had the same problem and was able to solve it by deleting iTunes and reinstalling.

The Finder tries quite hard to stop you from deleting iTunes; instead you can open Terminal.app and 'sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app'. You can download the replacement copy of iTunes from https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/