iTunes 8.1.1 destroyed all my program icons on Vista please help!

Yes it has done exactly the same to me all desktop icons now itunes and the short cuts all actually open itunes .
Uninstalling Itunes and qtime restores all to correct icons BUT reinstalling
iTunes takes over again
This is ridiculous !!
APPLE need some urgent attention to this

*Anyone know where to get iTunes 8.1.051* I can, with 8.1.1.installed, only open
iTunes ALL vista generated icons are now point to iTunes which is working fine
but any self created icons are fine and I only have to uninstall iTunes not qTime to put everything back to normal ,have tried all troubleshooting suggestions to no avail
are we the only two users with this problem

You're not the only ones to see this. It hit me today, and I'm very frustrated as well. My wife and I rely heavily on iTunes of course to keep our iPods updated ...

As noted, uninstalling iTunes removes the icon issue, after a reboot. However, I found that downgrading to an earlier version didn't help either -- the problem reappeared. There's something going on in the registry -- the iTunes upgrade to 8.1.1 seems to have done something really bizarre to Vista.

Sounds like iTunes was made the default. In Vista, have you tried changing the defaults in Control Panel > Default Programs?

Update
I removed itunes and tried reloading several times AND 8.1051 also gave problem
SOLUTION
remove iTunes, QTime and then *by hand* scrub the registry of EVERY reference to iTunes
Loaded 8.1.1 and worked like a dream and no further problems
( it seems that iTunes changed every windows icon to an itunes program and
then every icon opened iTunes )
In future i may remove old iTunes and do a clean install

Wow. That's pretty horrible to have to do. I don't want to have to do that each time iTunes updates ...

beats a broken PC :-))

Hirschv
Just seen your other post detailing your problems
I agree with your comments but if you wait for Apple to come up with a fix
**** will likely have frozen over .
I was chastised by VERY experienced luminaries on iLounge for making similar concerns .
Apparently millions have upgraded and we are not even on the radar
I suggest that if you want a working PC WITH iTunes you try my solutions
which worked ,tedious but a fix.
Interestingly I upgraded both an XP AND a beta windows 7 machine and it worked
just fine first time so it looks like an Apple/Vista issue BUT IT IS fixable

I tried your suggestions, and found that there are some items in the registry that I cannot delete, such as:

HKEY CURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.lnk\UserChoice \ProgID

This one points to iTunes, and I think may be one of the big culprits. I have tried to delete it, and get an error message (this is after the warning):

Unable to delete all specified values.

When I reinstalled iTunes after cleaning out the registry as noted everything reverted back to the iTunes icons, etc. So while your fix may have worked for you, it didn't for me. This is very disappointing, and I am more disappointed with Apple's programmers and testers. Sigh.

I have just checked the registry of the machine that gave problems and following
your item ,when i get to .lnk I have only 2 subfolders
openwithlist
openwithprogids
neither have any value set
when you tried to delete was it the value on left or right section of screen
as I found some values also would not delete unless I removed from the other side to the side I was trying to delete but sorry cannot remember which
and as you say it is pretty soul destroying cleaning manually

Hmm. I tried doing this by deleting the subkey on the right. I have removed the one on the left ... I will try again later.

It appears that if I do a complete reinstall (this is after a complete uninstall and cleaning out the registry), that the problem re-surfaced. However, going back after the reinstall and deleting THIS key (on the left side in RegEdit), then rebooting the computer solved the problem, my shortcut icons on the desktop now work, and iTunes appears to be fine (I haven't tried to sync one of our iPods, but ...):

HKEY CURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.lnk

Now the key is in the registry, but is empty. That is okay by me, since everything appears to work. Good grief. I do hope the developers at Apple pay attention.

Message was edited by: hirschv

Definitely a registry issue, see my most recent post in this thread.