iTunes 4.9 Special Report: Old version of iTunes help displayed, solution

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 11:46 a.m. PT

2 min read

For some users, the newly installed iTunes 4.9 help file does not properly display after installing the new update.

One reader writes:

"When you click on 'What's New in iTunes' you get 'What's New in iTunes 4.8.'

"A call to Apple revealed that tech support was seeing the same thing on their Macs. This leaves Mac users pretty much on their own to puzzle out how the new podcast features of iTunes 4.9 work. A search on 'podcast' returns 'no matching help topics were found.' Fortunately, it's fairly intuitive."

Thomas Santee adds "After updating to iTunes 4.9 I selected Help to read what's new. The front window opened but most of the links didn't do anything. So I clicked the house button on the Help bar (for home) and then the links worked. However, clicking 'What's New?' got me the description of what's new in iTunes 4.8, not 4.9."

Solutions

In some cases, this issue can be resolved through the deletion of four specific files -- three .plist files and one cache folder -- associated with Apple's Help Viewer.

Close Help Viewer, and drag the the following files, located in ~/Library/Preferences/

com.apple.help.plist

com.apple.helpui.plist

com.apple.helpviewer.plist

and the following folder, located in ~/Library/Caches

com.apple.helpui

to the Trash. Re-launch Help Viewer and check for persistence of the bug.

Since the problem does not occur for all users, it appears that one of these files may become corrupt prior to or during installation of iTunes 4.9.

For some readers, the above workaround fails, but a re-install of iTunes 4.9 from the standalone download was successful.

Dominic Dunlop writes:

"Like several of your correspondents, I too found I was seeing iTunes 4.8 help. Deleting Help Viewer preferences didn't help -- indeed, it made things worse: Help Viewer showed a blank page on being launched by iTunes. So I quit iTunes, dragged it to the trash, and reinstalled from the stand-alone installer. That fixed things."