Ok, see, i have this nice gold ipod mini 2gb, i love it, use it every day and such. But now my itunes installation is corrupt and i can no longer manage my songs on my ipod!

I first tried reinstalling, got a weird error basically sayin the installation failed. I then tried removing itunes before reinstalling (from within the itunes installer exe). same problem. then i removed itunes using the control panel and saw a version of quicktime of roughly twice the size of my itunes in the list too. since quicktime is linked to itunes these days i figured i should remove that one too.

So there i went, downloading the installer again, choose to install itunes and poof, same error! error -3 or whatever. So i start googling how to solve it. multiple forums suggested removing all itunes and quicktime registry keys. multiple people confirmed that this should do the trick. so i tried and hey my control panel spontaniously forgot i ever installed itunes or quicktime.

I retry the itunes installer again and now i get a "repair installation" and "remove itunes" message. strange, because i removed all registry keys and it shouldn't notice itunes was ever installed right?

Still, i'll try repairing. but i get a message stating i cant repair the software because it's not installed on the computer.

Ok, so that didn't work. lets try to remove it then. but again itunes tells me "hey u loser, u dont even have itunes installed! how am i supposed to delete it if it's not even there?"

so i'm stuck now.... i cant install itunes, it doesnt give me a plain install option. i cant repair it 'cuz its "not installed" and i cant remove it 'cuz it's "not installed"

I also tried apple.com's trouble shootings, didnt work either.

Anyone know how i can manually delete itunes maybe?

I already installed quicktime alternatives that allow me to play mov files again. (though sadly QTVR activeX components still dont work) but i kind of really want to put my new songs on my ipod and remove some others i'm bored with. hence the need for itunes.

oh btw, there's no itunes and quicktime dir's in my program files either, no items for it in my start menu, non in my quickstart menu, and non on my desktop. And the quicktime files in windows/system32 are gone too (as suggested on apple.com). so those parts are deleted already.

there's also no ipod or itunes processes running in my ctrl+alt+del, and i also tried rebooting (which windows seems to need sometimes)

Sounds vaguely like even though you've uninstalled it (its not on your hard drive), you need to clean some itunes remnants out of your registry that somehow got orphaned in there... maybe... now as to how you do that... no idea.

Sounds like you need to clean your registry. There are a two basic ways of doing this, by manually searching and removing anything related to Quicktime or iTunes (possibly Apple as well), or by downloading and running one of the many registry cleaners out there.

I'd recommend getting a registry cleaner, try RegSeeker. You should see a bit of an improvement in speed running a registry cleaner every week or two, but even if you only use it when you need to get rid of obselete entries in the registry it should be good.

If you want to manually edit your registry, type 'regedit' in the run box from your start menu, then F3 will bring up the search box. Once you've entered in your search terms, subsequent F3s will keep searching.

Make sure you backup your registry before making any changes, have a look here for one method.

problem is, there are exactly 0 registry keys left that contain either the word "itunes" "ipod" or "quicktime" (I already cleaned those out of the registry) And indeed i did use regseeker for that. It didn't help anything though :(

Attached Link: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93976

Yup, i already did that too, ran through all of it, from top to bottom.

Remembering apple' philosophy do more with less and charge twice as much fore it leads me to believe the depatment of redundabcy department has mothing to do with your problem. However when you uninstalled the program the ininstaller  could have left a couple of files on the computer which prevent it from installing properly. check the directory structure for this and try reinstalling if the  install fails try to find out any error messages - maybe you could install to another directory??

I got my ipod very cheap so I'm not complaining about apple's prices and my ipod really does everything i need from an mp3 player, so i dont mind the apple strategy on that field

Af far as the problem goes, it doesnt give an install option, only a repair or remove, neither of which work. I also checked for files left in the program files dir. But there's nothing in there relating to apple, itunes, ipod or quicktime. I also checked for the files in windows/system32 (as suggested on apple's site). Obviously  there is still something hidden somewhere but i cant find it. The strange thing is i can't seem to really find my problem back yet on google. Guess I'll search some more though..

C:Documents and Settings(your windows login)Application Data and C:Documents and Settings(your windows login)Local SettingsApplication Data Delete any Apple, iPod or Quicktime info/files/folders that you find there. Also, remove any keys that point to Apple files in the registry: MOV, PICT, QT and so on. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT contains first extensions and then descriptions together with what programs opens them. If that doesn't work, please return here. BTW, check what extension says what, cause QTVR will probably also be associated with Bryce, too.

Tried it. it doesnt seem to work.

I'm currently looking into forcing msi to install. c:iTunesSetup.exe /fa should force reinstallation of all files, but gives an 1628 could not complete installation error so far...

Download Windows Installer CleanUp Utility and see whether it can fix the situation. BTW, check whether there's anything in Program Files -> Common Files

It sounds like it could be a corruted log file. try the ccleaner app Agent Smith taloked about a while ago. It gets rid of lots of junk mostly useless logfiles The only disadvantage to that app is it also gets rid of cookies so you'll for example have to log onto renderosity manually the next time you come here but it sounds like that would be worth it to you at this point..

Windows installer cleanup utility doesnt show any itunes installation to remove so that wont work. I'll go and have a shot with ccleaner though ;-)

So far forcing msi got me a network installation of itunes, but i cant get it to run yet.. lol.

it still didnt work! :( this so sucks :(

Rayraz,

not sure if you got this fixed or not, but you need to make sure you delete your ipod updater as well as itunes, and quicktime. Once you uninstall the ipod updater follow these steps

**Remove leftover components
**12) Open My Computer. Open your hard drive. Open Program Files.

1. Delete iPod, iTunes and QuickTime folders if present.
2. Move back to the hard drive root. Open Documents and Settings. Open All Users.
3. Select Folder Options from the Tools menu. Select the View tab. Select "Show hidden files and folders". Click OK.
4. Open the Application folder. Delete the QuickTime folder if present.
5. Open the Apple Computer folder. Delete the iTunes folder.
6. Go back to Documents and Settings. Open the folder with your username.
7. Open the Application Data folder. Open the Apple Computer folder. Delete the iTunes folder.
8. Open the Local Settings folder. Open the Application Data folder. Delete the iTunes folder.
9. Go back to the Local Settings Folder. Open the Temp folder. Delete QTInstallerHelper.dll.
10. Empty the Recycle Bin.
11. Select Folder Options from the Tools menu. Select the View Tab. Select "Do not show hidden files or folders". Click OK.
12. Restart the computer.

Reinstall itunes.

Let me know if this works if not message me, and I can help you further.

Michael

did you try playing unpaid mp3's in your ipod? maybe this is an secret safety measure kicking in against illlegal music listening? just a thought.