Apple Mobile Device Support won't Uninstall

🙂 Righty-ho. Fortunately there's no values within the keys (on my PC) so that makes life a bit simpler.

Probably best to make a backup of the registry prior to proceeding (or set up a System Restore Point immediately prior to setting out on the edit).

We'll try to get your resgistry matching mine.

In your start menu, click Run.
Type regedit and hit enter.
Expand HKEY CURRENTUSER
Expand Software
Expand Microsoft

Right-click on the Microsoft key and select "New > Key"
Down at the bottom of the list of subkeys under Microsoft, a new key should appear. Rename it (with the following capitalisation):

*Windows Script Host*

Now right-click on the Windows Script Host Key and select "New > Key". Rename the new key that appears:

Settings

Probably best to check the permissions on the keys now.

On my Windows Sctript Host key:

My Administrators group on the PC has Full Control and Read as "Allow"
My user account has Full Control and Read as "Allow"
SYSTEM has Full Control and Read as "Allow"
RESTRICTED has Read as "Allow"

On the Settings key I have the same set of permissions settings.

After making the changes, try quitting out of regedit. Reboot and try another CleanUp install. Does it go through this time?

"Cannot create key: Error while opening the key Microsoft." Is this a problem with the registry or the computer itself?

Actually, I think we've got an issue with ACLs (Access Control Lists) on the keys. Even though your usual account may have "correct-looking" permissions (according to regedit), if the underlying ACLs for the keys are stuffed up then we won't be able to make adjustments to the keys.

These ACL horrors were more common a few years ago than they are nowadays with XP. So we might be dealing with subtle damage that got picked up a while ago, but has only just got relevant (just when we actually needed to use CleanUp for something).

Thinking in terms of the simpler ways forward that might help with an ACL issue. (Sort of trying a "least aggressive measures first" strategy.)

We've got a problem here with HKEY CURRENTUSER. Those keys are settings particular to your normal user account. So, if we create a new user account (with full administrative rights), fingers crossed the HKEY CURRENTUSER registry hive for that new account will not suffer from the same problems as your usual user account, and we might well be able to get CleanUp installed from inside the new account.

First, drag your msicuu2.exe file to somewhere publically accessible on the PC. (Like C:\, for example.)

Head into your User Accounts control panel, and create a new user account with full administrative rights. Now log out of your old account and log into the new account. (Don't use fast user switching to move between accounts.)

Inside the new account, track down your msicuu2.exe and try installing CleanUp again.

Does it install properly this time?

Woohoo!

Okay ... we'll use CleanUp from inside that new account (just in case the ACL issue on the old account raises its ugly head in the context of running CleanUp too). But we'll try the iTunes update from inside your normal account (because on some PCs with ACL issues, doing an update from a different account from which an earlier version of iTunes/QuickTime was installed can lead to a different sort of ACL issue than the one we ran into with CleanUp).

So here's the plan.

*In the new user account:*

Run the CleanUp utility ("Start > All programs > Windows Install Clean Up"). In the list of programs that appears in CleanUp, select any *Apple Mobile Device Support* entries and click "Remove".

Quit out of CleanUp.

Log out of the new account, and log back into your usual account. (Again, don't use fast user switching to move between accounts.)

Now let's try the iTunes 9.2 update again. Does it go through properly this time?

... what's the text of that message, Stone?

(There's at least one that I can think of that can be related to ACL troubles, and we know something of that sort is afoot for you. Perhaps we've gotten to the heart of matters now.)

"iTunes requires a newer version of Apple Mobile Device Support. Please uninstall both Apple Mobile Device Support and iTunes, then reinstall iTunes again."

No, that's not the ACL one I was thinking of.

Plausibly, we're looking at three different problems happening at once for you on the PC. (The AMDS .msi thing, the ACLs thing, and this thing.)

Doublechecking some things before proceeding.

During the last iTunes reinstall, did you notice a "Rolling Back action" being said during the AMDS part of the install?

Is AMDS currently being shown as installed in your Add or Remove Programs control panel?

Sorry about the delay. Yes, complete uninstall "in the order" sounds a good plan. I'll be marshalling my resources on XP versions of AMDS installer rollbacks, in case we see one on the reinstall. (Not something I have to work on every day, so it takes a bit of fiddling about finding most best/most-current set of instructions on it.)