application does not start

I have a brand new Microsoft Surface Pro 2 machine running Windows 8.1. iTunes runs ONLY when my Surface is docked in its docking station. When docked, it runs without issues.

When my Surface is undocked, iTunes fails to start. When I try to start it in safe mode it gets me to the pop-up window telling me that itunes is running in safe mode and when I press "continue" it also fails to start.

When I check for what Apple processes run, I see no appps, but see the Bonjour Service, the iPodService Module, and the itunes Helper.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling. I uninstalled everything from Apple, including, on the second attempt , going through the directories in "Program files", "Program files x86", and "Appdata" removing all traces of Apple directories. I also trolled through the registry and removed all itunes and Apple-related entries. Once iTunes is reinstalled the behaviour is unchanged from that described above.

My docking station is in my office. This suggests two differences between the configuration that works (aka the docked one) and the one that does no (aka the undocked one): (1) being hooked up with my office network and SAN and (2) being connected via the docking station's Ethernet port rather than WiFi. To try to see if the former might be responsible, I undocked and opened up a VPN session so that my machine would see itlself as connected to my office network. This had no effect on the problem and iTunes once again failed to start.

Not tested yet is (1) taking the docking station out of the office environment, bringing it home, and seeing if this works and (2) trying to connect via a dongle and Ethernet rather than through WiFi.

However, if anyone out there has any ideas that might help resolve this, I would be most grateful.

David