Simmons Consulting, the Website of Toby Simmons

Error -42018 when downloading from iTunes

24
Oct

Earlier tonight I received an error message in iTunes 7.0.1.8 (Windows) when trying to download a purchased song. The error message said “An unknown error has occurred (-42018). Please check your network connection.” Well the network was fine so I Googled for an answer and, oddly enough, found no salient results. I went to the iTunes support site and there found numerous posts about the error. The resolution turned out to be simple enough: deauthorize and reauthorize your computer. In Windows, you click under the store menu and select the “Deauthorize Computer …” option. After you enter your password, your computer is deauthorized. Next you just attempt to play one of your previously purchased songs. It will prompt you for your password again. Once you have reauthorized your computer, go to your pending downloads and restart the purchased song. At least it worked for me!

Comments (38) »

  1. ryan says:

    THANK YOU! I was looking everywhere for a resolution. That completely worked. Thanks.

  2. tamole says:

    Thanks! It worked for me too :)

  3. John Pearce says:

    Thank You! This post helped me too!

  4. Jason says:

    You are a star, this was driving me crazy.

  5. Adam says:

    Thank you! Worked great for me! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!

  6. jeff says:

    Worked …Thanks for sharing … Never would have thought to do that.

  7. Gabe says:

    Thank you!!! This is such an easy fix…no idea why it started though.

  8. immers says:

    bro i salute you for this piece of information.

  9. Melanie says:

    It didn’t work for me. :(

  10. Matt says:

    You’re a life saver. Thanks!

  11. Valiik says:

    Thank you!!! Easy enough.

  12. Scott says:

    Thank you very much for posting this solution.

  13. Madeline says:

    It didnt work for me. Any other suggestions?

  14. Justin says:

    Thanks! Great piece of info – worked a treat.

  15. ghrowl says:

    LOL awesome! Thanx a lot, big props to you =)

  16. buffchicktx says:

    You Rock! Why the hell does Apple do this? There are so many bugs, it seems with their software. Thanks again because I thought I wasted my money on these downloads.

  17. bigJ60 says:

    thank you so much

  18. These issues arent caused by apple, these problems are caused by Windows and microsoft’s the blame here mates. If you have been running itunes on an Mac you would never have had these issues.

  19. Kobayashi says:

    It worked. THANKS!

  20. ActiveO2 says:

    Great!! Thank You ;-)

  21. joe says:

    Ok, I’ve been looking for an answer for a few months. I thought this was the answer and I was so happy and I had a big grin. I go into itunes and deauthorize myself and all. then I tryed downloading the songs and can anyone guess what happened?

    If you said it gave my the error again you guessed correctly. please please please help me. It might have something to do with me have windows vista(newest windows). I don’t know help!

  22. will says:

    You could try it on a different computer. I think the purchase information is saved in your account, so it shouldn’t matter which computer you use as long as it’s authorized.

    The original solution worked for me, so thanks a lot!

  23. Anonymous says:

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  24. Lisa says:

    OMG…Thank you sooo much. Thank you for sharing. A quick fix for once!!!

  25. J-La says:

    Thank You soooooooooooooooo much!!!

  26. Jay says:

    It worked, thank you.

  27. Eric says:

    Well, it didn’t work. I deauthorized the pc, tried to open a purchased tune, and it asked for my password. All according to the procedure. It then told me that my pc was now authorized, and proceeded to not play the song. So I clicked on the play button, and it asked me to authorize my pc. Again.

    I tried to deauthorize it, shut it down, restart, and then play a purchased tune, but I get the same thing. It just doesn’t want to work! I gotta say, I’ve had nothing but problems with iTunes 7.x. I’m surprised by the number of little bugs that keep cropping up. It’s not enough to send me to a Zune or anything, but one would think Apple would’ve had a cleaner product release than this.

  28. bronco says:

    If you have Windows-Vista installed, you will get this error even after deauthorizing. The only thing that helps here is, you have to start itunes.exe as administrator. Right click on itunes and run as Administrator.

  29. Bruce says:

    I have Windows-Vista installed, so I tried to run itunes as Administrator as described at it worked a treat! Thank you so much for this information as it saved me days of frustration!

  30. Joe says:

    Thanks that helped me too, a new Vista user. I’m hoping there’s an update to fix it, so I don’t have to run as Admin every time. Thanks again! Joe

  31. Brett says:

    Thank you very much!!! Couldn’t find the answer anywhere on apple.com… your solution worked like a charm

  32. Josetxo says:

    Big Thank you from Spain. I was crazy for two weeks trying to find a solution. It worked perfectly. I will propose you for the Nobel Prize of Apple Errors (does not exist yet?)

  33. Josef says:

    Thank you so much. You rock

  34. Andrea says:

    I’m on MacBook Pro and had this problem . . . your solution worked perfectly. A big thank you.

  35. Jim says:

    Opened Itunes.exe as administrator — this, after authorizing and deauthorizing a couple of times without success. Opening as Administrator worked like a champ. Great work, thanks!

  36. DaveR says:

    Windows-Vista and got that error,
    So I tried deauth – repair installation – run itunes as Administrator – authorizeded, – then had to ‘check for purchases’ and it worked… THANK YOU!!!

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