itunes install fails on windows vista

btw - i select cancel because teh service will not start and then the install rollsback - leaving me with nada.

also - i have turned off windows firewall and snoozed my anti-virus software when attempting the installs.

and turned off the vista security thingy when nothing else worked. and did the download only thing through the updater and tried installing components separately.

Message was edited by: rmurtagh

The service shows up in the service manager as stopped during the installation at the point where it fails with the retry message. If I try and start it manually the service manager responds with a "service failed to respond in a timely manner" message immediately.
It seems that most people who have had this level of difficulty ended up reinstalling the OS. I finally don't hate my Vista install. It is not what I would call love, but it would be huge to reinstall every thing.
For some reason I had not though of trying making a new admin user. Thanks for the thought.

no joy - I even optimistically named the new user iTunes. I get the same results.
Why can't I install iTunes without the iPod service? I never sync my iPod to this machine. I sync it to my Mac. Why iTunes then? I hate Windows Media Player even more than Vista - nuff said. Plus if an emergency song runes (needed Your a Mean One, Mr. Grinch last Christmas) it good to go.

Any more ideas?

I had used msconfig and aggressively turned off startups and services. I had not done it after a fresh uninstall and cleanup and reboot though. Just the reboot as part of applying the changes made and trying to reinstall iTunes. I had just completed that to no avail.

So what I just tried was as follows:
1. Uninstalled all Apple software including QuickTime, Bonjour, Software Updater and Mobile Device Support using the Apple guide.
2. Rebooted.
3. Ran RegCure to remove misc registry entries no longer associated with iTunes, etc.
4. Ran MS Installer Cleanup Wizard.
5. Deleted any remaining Apple directories in c:\Program Files.
6. Rebooted.
7. Ran msconfig and aggressively deselected startups and services. Ensured iTunes and iPod where selected. Ensured selective startup was selected.
8. Rebooted.
9. Downloaded and reinstalled iTunes.
10. Received the same failure notices - the failed to start one and if i tried to start the iPod service manually through the service manager, failed to respond in a timely manner message. The events log for the iTunes install error is "A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the iPod Service service to connect." and the event log for the manual start from the service manager attempt is: "The iPod Service service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion."
11. Changed permissions for all entries in the permissions list to full control.
12. Tried reinstall - failure.
13. Took ownership of c:\program files\ipod directories and files.
14. Tried reinstall - failure.
15. To make sure I tried the install two times - once with my iPod connected and once without.
16. Wrote this entry in the forums.
Previously I had tried the new admin user you had suggested.

I am not sure why I did not try this before, but through the service manager,during the install, I changed the logon from local system account to local service with no password and that worked. Then I went back to the installation and that completed I thought I had tried all the "user logon" options from the logon tab.

Very odd...

Thank you for your input. if I had not gotten a quick response I probably would have given up trying to install iTunes.

Message was edited by: rmurtagh