How To Completely Uninstall and Remove all Traces of iTunes
Are you going crazy trying to completely uninstall iTunes from your PC?
Ok this is not one of our usual posts but after going bonkers for days searching through a number of forums I felt compelled to share this solution with anyone with a similar nightmare.
Scenario: Your latest download of iTunes got corrupted on your system somehow or was interrupted during installation. Doesn’t matter how. It happened to me. I realized I had to remove and reinstall iTunes. So I thought I would just download the latest version first and try reloading it. No dice. So I thought ok, I would first remove it using the ADD/REMOVE feature in the control panel and try again. Not so simple thanks to the brain trust over at Apple. Low and behold I could not get the iTunes program off the Programs list! Reloading itunessetup.exe gave errors and would not start! In my ensuing hours of Google research I found many posts of folks with just this issue in a similar situation. Let me share with you what I found and post some information from various forums I researched that will help you solve this problem:
First here is your overall objective:
Before you can reinstall iTunes you must first remove all reminants of the following applications including all “left over” files from your registry. Yep… that scary place on your PC !! :
First try removing each of these with the uninstallers. You may find you cannot get some of these completely uninstalled…
- iTunes Softare
- Apple Mobile Support
- iPhone (if you have it loaded)
- Bonjour (especially Bonjour, the most problematic and most difficult component to remove properly! )
- Quicktime
- Apple Software Update
- and anything else related to iTunes — that’s the tough part
Here is how to do this with a special freeware program designed specifically to REMOVE ALL TRACES of a previously loaded program from your PC. You can obtain it from our Downloads area once registered. Registration is just the typical bulletin board / forum type registration to avoid spammers.
1. BACK UP YOUR PC — Make sure you have restore points in case you really mess up and have to roll back. I can’t stress this enough but if you feel lucky proceed to the next step.
2. Download RevoUninstall and Unzip to a folder on your desktop
3. Install Revo and run it and follow instructions.
4. Find one of the applications to remove and select it.
4a. Click on the Uninstall icon in the top toolbar. It will ask you if you are sure, say yes.
4.b Select the ADVANCED deep clean option 4th bullet down. You will need to DELETE the BOLD ENTRIES when the screen appears and you are prompted.
4c. Note: I use Firefox and some /pref information also appeared. I choose not to delete these since there were no clear reference to itunes anywhere in the directory listing. I did not have any problems skipping these for fear of screwing up my FF preferences. (you could always re-run and remove these and try again if you felt you needed to because YOU DID BACK UP YOUR PC, RIGHT ???)
5. Make sure you remove ALL BOLD HIGHLIGHTED REGISTRY KEYS and FILES in each screen that Revo presents you. ALL DRIVES !! Be sure to follow the prompts as it cleans, you want to make sure to delete all of the registry entries HIGHLIGHTED IN BOLD ONLY.
You have to remove all these following applications: iTunes, Apple Mobile Support, iPhone, Bonjour, Quicktime, Apple Software Update and anything else related to itunes. Don’t skip any EXCEPT YOUR MY MUSIC files of course!!!
6. REBOOT….
7. Then check your ADD/REMOVE programs in your Control Panel. You should see all previous programs removed.
8. Check that your PC is functioning normally. Make sure windows browsers work and everything seems fine! If not you may want to rerun Revo…. worst case, restore your backup as you may have some other issue affecting your situation.
9. Now DOWNLOAD A NEW COPY of iTunes from Apple Site. It should now install like as a new installation.
10. You will probably need to log into iTunes Store and RE-AUTHENTICATE your PC to accept your recently purchased songs etc. The new software allows you to authorize 5 PCs.
Hopefully Apple will acknowledge this as an issue and they should address it in new releases. The fact that they have you load software on your PC that almost requires a degree in Computer Science to completely remove all associated keys in the Registry is really not what I would call elegant in this day and age!
Hope this saves someone out there some time. If so please let us know in a comment…
Also… If you found this post useful and helpful please rate it up (+ - ) below and give it a Digg or BuzzUp. Thanks.
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on Friday - Apr 11th, 2008 at 9:07 pm scotty777 wrote:
Apple iTunes is a HOG…. way too much advertising!!! It is not PC friendly. One slip up with the iPod connection especially if the software is updating in the background and your cooked !! Great post… thanks.
on Monday - Aug 4th, 2008 at 5:19 am LYNDA wrote:
THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’M NOT A COMPUTER WHIZZ KID OR WHAT HAVE YOU, SO I FIND ANYTHING TO DO WITH UNINSTALLING ETC CONFUSING AND WHEN IT DOESN’T WORK AS IT SHOULD - I’M AT A LOSS. YOUR ADVISE HELPED ME UNINSTALL ITUNES AFTER TRYING FOR WEEKS!
on Monday - Aug 4th, 2008 at 5:36 pm ZZ Bachman wrote:
I am very happy this post helped you Lynda. I hope others find this post useful… If so let us know here and be sure to Digg up and rate the post. Thanks, ZZ
on Monday - Sep 29th, 2008 at 10:51 am lelday wrote:
Scotty777,
Thankyou so much for recommending RevoUninstall.
It worked brilliantly.Got rid of all iTunes.I was getting
desperate but this was so simple.I can`t thank you
and zz enough.
on Tuesday - Sep 30th, 2008 at 12:15 am ZZ Bachman wrote:
Glad you found this post helpful. We appreciate the comments and hope you were able to accomplish what you set out to do!!
For most people out there, getting into this level of registry removal is pretty intimidating. You should not need a degree in Computer Science in order to remove a piece of software without having all sorts of issues in the process.
ZZ
on Thursday - Oct 2nd, 2008 at 12:16 am bryce wrote:
This wasnt very helpful to me as i happened to have uninstalled all those itunes related programs/files you listed that needs to be completely removed by revo-uninstall. So basically theres nothing for me to choose when i run revo as it doesnt detect any itunes programs because they are already uninstalled (not completely though).
How do completely remove ALL itunes files in this case?
on Sunday - Oct 5th, 2008 at 1:55 am Rat wrote:
Thanks for the revo
works well
on Sunday - Oct 5th, 2008 at 8:11 am feli_fel wrote:
hopefully this works im trying it out let see later cross your fingers
on Sunday - Oct 5th, 2008 at 5:53 pm Eckzander wrote:
How long should ths take ?
on Sunday - Oct 5th, 2008 at 10:46 pm ZZ Bachman wrote:
Eckzander that depends on how messed up or corrupted your iTunes installation is. These steps have helped some 400 people so far based on the number of downloads. If it helps let us know, if not perhaps on of our members might have a suggestion. In life there are nothing certain except you know what. Good luck.
on Friday - Oct 10th, 2008 at 10:43 am Nouty wrote:
Doesn’t do any good. Can’t even find iTunes and there is no way of searching it from my pc….. it only finds Apple software update and quicktime. Any advice?
on Friday - Oct 10th, 2008 at 8:41 pm ZZ Bachman wrote:
Nouty — Wish I could help. Sounds like you might need an iTunes software specialist to help you. I would suggest you look into the following link and see if you can get some some support directly from Apple Inc. http://www.apple.com/support/products/ otherwise you can really mess up your registry if you don’t know what you are doing and the instructions given in the post don’t help. Sorry wish I could be more helpful.
on Sunday - Oct 19th, 2008 at 6:43 am chrissyb wrote:
I tried this as explained - but strangely when I re-booted I’d lost my desktop, menu bars etc. I didn’t panic re-started in safe-mode and wound back back to to yesterdays restore point.
What was really strange about that though is when I relaunched itunes it treated it as a new installation and I was able to use itunes again - When I thought it may have re-wound to the pre-existing installation of itunes that was unusuable.
I thought that was quite bizzare?
Nevertheless it worked for me - but I don’t know why. Needless to say make sure you’ve backed up before you start the procedure, as explained in the instructions.
Chris
on Friday - Oct 24th, 2008 at 6:34 pm DougTomczak wrote:
Well, after trying to update quicktime and repeatedly being denied, I started looking for some program that would remove itunes and quicktime completely. I found this site and Revo uninstall. I tried it and was impressed with how it searched for all files that needed to be removed first. But I still couldn’t get quicktime to be installed. So I started to look in explorer for anything that still was there for anythings apple. There were files everywhere in my C drive. So I went about deleting these, I looked in every folder and found apple in places I would of never thought of. I deleted all these and cleaned up my recycle bin, then rebooted for the 10th time and checked Revo uninstall again. Crossed my fingers and downloaded quicktime again. Horray, it worked! I now only have quicktime installed and that is the way I want it. So, if you are having troubles, try this, it worked for me. By the way I never could get Bonjour files deleted from my C drive. But it didn’t hurt the install. Thanks