Reader Randy Immel wants the best of both worlds on his Mac. He writes:
When I installed Lion on my iMac I wiped its hard drive and then installed Lion “clean.” After the installation I was playing around with QuickTime X in the hope that it would allow me to edit movies to the extent that I could with QuickTime 7 Pro. It doesn’t, so I downloaded the latest version of QuickTime 7 from Apple. When I try to install it though, it won’t. The installer tells me that a version of QuickTime is already installed and won’t let me proceed. How can I get QuickTime 7 back?
The problem is that you’ve downloaded the wrong version of QuickTime 7. You need QuickTime Player 7.6.6 for Mac OS X v10.6.3 (the version designed for Snow Leopard). What you’ve undoubtedly downloaded is QuickTime 7.6.9. Although the version number is higher, this is actually the version intended for Leopard.
When you install the Snow Leopard version (7.6.6) the installer places QuickTime 7 in your Utilities folder. Because the installer doesn’t see another copy of QuickTime in that location, it’s happy to proceed. The Leopard version (7.6.9) attempts to place QuickTime 7 in the Applications folder and because it sees a copy of QuickTime Player already in place, it balks.
Once installed you’ll have to enter the registration code you paid 30 bucks for lo these many years ago. Having located the code (you did write it down, yes?), just choose QuickTime -> Registration and enter it in the Registration Code field.
If you can’t find that code, Macworld forum member jdb8167 offers this excellent tip: Go to the Apple online store, click the Account button at the top right of the window, enter your username and password, and click the Downloadable Software Purchases link. You should see your QuickTime purchase there, along with its registration code. If you’ve never had a copy of QuickTime Pro 7 and would like one, you can buy it from Apple by clicking the Purchase QuickTime Pro button within QuickTime Player 7 or using this link.
Updated 12:00PM 7/25/11 to include tip for recovering registration code.