* login and use an administrative privileges account
* right-click the Quicktime icon in the system tray and select "Exit"
* under Start:Control Panel:Adminstrative Tools, select "Services". Find "iPodService" and "iTunesHelper" in the listing, right-click and select "Stop"
* using Start:Control Panel:Add or Remove Programs, remove iTunes and/or Quicktime; verify that both are gone from the list
* delete the Quicktime Player icon on the desktop
* delete the iTunes, iPod, and Quicktime folders under C:\Program Files
That is the basic strategy that I followed in each of my iterations of the troubleshooting process. Figuring orphan registry values might then give me trouble, I ran Registry Mechanic for a registry scan and repair until the scan returned no problems. After finding this last post on manually deleting related files, I also deleted the following:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Apple Computer
\iTunes
\Quicktime
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Apple Computer
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
iTunes
Quicktime Player
C:\WINDOWS\system32\quicktime
QuickTime.qts
QuickTimeVR.qtx
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