How do I install iTunes without administrator privileges?

You can't. Presumably your school doesn't want you putting programmes on it that they have not authorised and the purpose of not having Administrator Privilege is to stop you doing so.

But if you already have the music on a PC at home, then why aren't you using that PC to manage your iPod?

Here's something to think about:

• even if you were able to install iTunes on the school's laptop and use it to manage your iPod, then when you leave the school you will lose not only the ability to manage your iPod with that Library, but also the back up of what is on your iPod. If your iPod has music on it from one iTunes Library, it is not possible to add that music from the iPod to another Library and furthermore, trying to synchronise the iPod with a different iTunes Library can result in losing all your music
• iPods fail, get lost or stolen, so you need a backup. The first backup is your iTunes Library on the computer that you use to manage the iPod. (It's always wise to have a further backup too.) Once you leave the school you will lose that backup

Eventually, you would end up on this forum saying that now that you had left the school, the iPod has failed and you have lost the music on it and have no access to your library. We've seen many posts here along those lines.

To Fail - definition:

• • to no longer work as excepted, so that you can no longer use it for its intended purpose.

To Fail - examples of:

• • power switch breaks and the iPod can no longer be turned on
  • on an iPod Classic; the hard drive stops working (in other words, it fails), More common than storage failure on an iPod Touch perhaps, but even an iPod Touch's storage can fail)
  • the battery reaches the end of its useful life and will not accept any charge
  • iPod simply stops responding to anything and even connecting it to iTunes for a Restore does not work
  • screen broken and it no longer shows anything on the display
  • dock connector contacts broken and the plug no longer fits into the iPod
  • headphone port broken

Any of those things (and more) might mean that you regard the cost of repairing the iPod as too high (i.e. it might be cheaper to find an audio player that does the same job for less money than it costs to repair the iPod).

Eventually, there will be additional factors that mean that you will not be able to get the iPod repaired at any cost:

• • non-availability of parts (specially made parts will eventually all be used after they stop being manufactured)
  • inability to find someone how knows how to fix an iPod

Even if you were to manage to have a failed (broken) iPod repaired, it is more than likely that your music would no longer be on it once you got it back. Without access to the iTunes library on the school laptop you would have to rebuild your music library. That means that if you do not have a backup (see below), that for music that you:

• • purchased from online stores, such as Amazon, Bandcamp etc. you would need to go to your account with that store and download the music again
  • obtained from other sources, such as copied from a CD, you would need to go back to that original source (i.e. a CD or wherever) or pay again for a digital copy of that music
  • purchased from the iTunes Store, you would go to your Apple account (the same one used to buy the music originally) and download the music again (if it's still available, which it sometimes is not). A common scenario we see here is someone who buys all their music from the iTunes Store, leaves that school and then ends up here asking how to get that music back with their new Apple ID, that they created because "they no longer have access to the school's email" (you cannot):
    • first of all, the email address simply acts as an ID. One could sign into that Apple account even after leaving the school but remembering to then change the email address (not the ID) that Apple uses to communicate with you
    • but the very common thing we hear is that the user has forgotten not just their password (which is sometimes recoverable) but they don't even remember their old ID

There are things which can be sorted out and which I would not class as a failure. As an example, all content on the iPod becoming corrupted and unreadable by the iPod, but that a Restore could repair (using the same iTunes Library that the iPod has been using up to that point). Note that a Restore (of an iPod) results in all content on the iPod being deleted, so you would then have to re-load the music from that same iTunes Library.

Remember also that it is not possible to sync (synchronise) an iPod with another iTunes Library without deleting everything from the first library. In other words, you could not simply abandon your old iTunes, create a new iTunes Library and expect all your music to magically appear in it together with all the music from your previous library.

If you have (and maintain) a backup of all your music, on a portable drive, separate to the school computer, you could at least copy it onto a new computer and not have to re-download from several different places. Further, if you maintained a backup of the complete iTunes Music folder, that would contain the .itl file that iTunes uses to keep a list of star rating and playlists. No backup of the iTunes files means that you would lose your playlists.

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