ITunes 9 will not reinstall or uninstall on Windows 7 64-bit

Question

I'm at my wit's end. After upgrading from Windows XP Professional to Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, I found myself unable to run iTunes. I expected that, but I did not expect this: I cannot uninstall iTunes (or Bonjour or any of the other recommended programs to uninstall), repair iTunes, or install it with the 64-bit iTunes installer download.
When I try to uninstall, I get a message telling me that I have the 32-bit installer and need the 64-bit version.
When I try to run the iTunes 64-bit installer, it starts to install, but then pops up the following message: "This installer is intended for 32-bit versions of Windows. Please obtain the 64-bit installer from http:/www.apple.com/support/downloads/bonjour for windows.html."
Edited to add:
For the record, I followed the suggestions on both of these support pages:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1923
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1406
Message was edited by: ibntumart

Answer 1

Apologies about the delay. I've been brooding.
Although we don't know where the specific relevant keys are on modern versions of iTunes, there's a shotgun approach we can take to dealing with them, which has a reasonable chance of success in this case. The complicating factor in your case is that you've got a 64-bit Windows. So there's an extra hoop to jump through.
The basic approach is the procedure from the following weblog entry:
[Solving setup errors by using the SubInACL tool to repair file and registry permissions|http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/solving-setup-err ors-by-using-the-subinacl-tool-to-repair-file-and-registry-permissions.aspx]
The complicating factor is that we have to make an additional edit to the reset.cmd file.
When you're in Notepad, replacing the two YOURUSERNAME values with the name of your Windows 7 user account, in the first line of the batch file, replace the:
%programfiles%
... with:
%ProgramFiles(x86)%
(On a 64-bit Windows system, subinacl is installed in a different location than on 32-bit systems. So unless we make that change, the reset.cmd isn't going to be able to find subinacl and the reset.cmd won't work.)
While you're in Notepad editing the file, make sure each of the nine lines of the file start of a new line. (Sometimes they get smooshed up together on a single line, and then again the reset.cmd won't work.)
I'd strongly suggest setting up a System Restore point immediately prior to running the reset.cmd. There's instructions on that in the following document:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial143.html#manual