ITunes 8.2 will not recognize iPhone 3GS on Windows XP Pro

Question

Hi guys. I just got a new iPhone 3GS and I'm having problems getting it to sync up to my PC. I have an HP NC6400 PC notebook with Win XP Pro SP2. I installed the latest iTunes 8.2 and connected my iPhone, but nothing happens. The iPhone doesn't show up under devices and it doesn't ask to install drivers. I did several days of research on the net and tried a few different things. I booted up the iPhone in recovery mode, and it then asked to install a driver, but couldn't find any valid drivers. I found on a post somewhere that the iPhone uses a driver called USBAAPL.SYS under C:\Windows\System32\Drivers, but that file is nowhere to be found. I tried removing and reinstalling iTunes, and even tried iTunes v8.1, but no luck. I even found a link to download the file and tried to install that driver for the device, but it didn't recognize it as a valid driver. I tried connecting my iPhone to a friend's computer (Dell desktop PC also with XP SP2) and it worked perfectly, but on my own PC, no luck. There's something wrong with my PC.
There's another symptom that I noticed and I'm not sure if it's directly related or not. When I load iTunes, I get this message:
"Warning! The registry settings used by the iTunes drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs are missing. This can happen as a result of installing other CD burning software. Please reinstall iTunes."
I found a post referring to this on Apple's support site here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2372?viewlocale=en_US
I followed those instructions, and it seems the error message went away. Still though, no iPhone!
Can anyone please help me? Are there more diagnostics I can run? Is there a way to REALLY be sure iTunes has been completely uninstalled? Is there a way to see if some other software may be interfering with the installation of the drivers? My iPhone works fine on other PCs, but not mine! Thanks for your help!
Eric

Answer 1

Hey guys. Ok it looks like I figured it out for myself.
I opened the iTunesSetup.exe file with WinRar, and it allowed me to extract the individual .msi files for the various iTunes components. This included AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi, AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi, Bonjour.msi, iTunes.msi, MobileMe.msi, and QuickTime.msi. I then ran each .msi individually and Removed each component. Once this was finished, I ran iTunesSetup.exe again and installed from scratch, and it worked! It looks like there was something wrong with an old installation and it never completely uninstalled. Now it's detecting my iPhone and working fine!
Message was edited by: sleightmind