Reinstalling Quicktime X on a 10.6.x Mac

I had an issue this week, where somebody (not saying who, but it’s not the user’s fault in this instance) tossed the Quicktime Player application from /Applications on a 10.6.x Mac. Since that’s an application that’s included with the OS, there’s not a separate installer for it. Fortunately, other folks have had this problem before, so I was able to use this procedure to reinstall Quicktime Player without reinstalling the whole OS:

1. Downloaded and installed Pacifist.

2. Inserted a 10.6.x install DVD (I used a 10.6.3 install DVD in this case)

3. Opened Pacifist and chose “Open Apple Install Disks” (this part can take a few minutes to run)

4. Searched for “Quicktime Player.app”

5. Selected “Quicktime Player.app” (in Essentials.pkg/Applications) and chose “Install to Default Location” with administrator privileges.

6. Once Quicktime Player X was back in /Applications, I then ran the 10.6.7 Combo Update to make sure that the Quicktime application was fully updated.

Following the Combo update and reboot, I was then able to open a number of *ahem* test files from http://trailers.apple.com/ without a problem.