“I can’t uninstall iTunes on my Windows 10, it’s showing some files are missing and I don’t know what it is, how do I fix this problem? Thanks!”
There must be some valid reasons as to why you want to remove iTunes on your computer. iTunes is very important when it comes to downloading, managing, and even troubleshooting any iOS devices.
Removing iTunes however is not that easy. If you notice, there are a lot of components that you need to add during the installation and these components are spread out in your computer that makes them difficult to find when deleting the program.
Incomplete installation or a corrupted download may trigger the uninstall issue. You may need to fix the underlying causes first before you can remove the iTunes completely.
If you are unfamiliar with these errors and components, you surely can’t uninstall iTunes on Windows 10 computers. Today, we’ll show you 2 effective solutions on how to completely remove iTunes and all its components from your computer.
Part 1. How to Uninstall iTunes on Windows 10 Control PanelPart 2. How to Uninstall iTunes Without iTunes.msi on Windows 10Part 3. Summary
Part 1. How to Uninstall iTunes on Windows 10 Control Panel
The most common way of uninstalling and removing a program on a Windows computer is via the Control Panel. This is where you can see the entire list of software and applications that were installed in your system. Some of the programs here are barely used or not even used at all.
You can remove them by opening the control panel and clicking the uninstall button. However, it’s quite different from iTunes. If you wanted to uninstall iTunes on your Windows 10, the first thing you need to do is to close iTunes and all its running processes, here’s how:
- Open your Task Manager. You can do this by pointing your mouse on the lower taskbar and right-click and choose Task Manager. You can also use the short keys CTRL + ALT + DEL and select Task Manager.
- You will see all the running processes listed. Find the following:
- “iPodService.exe”
- “AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe”
- “AppleMobileDeviceService.exe”
- “iTunesHelper.exe”
- Highlight each file and click End Task. You have to end the task on each .exe file.
After you have successfully ended these running tasks, you can now open the Control panel and do the following:
- Find iTunes among the list of your Programs and Features in the control panel. You can open the control panel by searching it from the Start search box. Or you can open the Win +R and type in control panel
- Once you have successfully deleted iTunes find the following related apps:
- Apple Application Support
- Bonjour
- Apple Software Update
- Apple Mobile Device Support
Remove Related-apps and Components
Another possible reason why you can’t uninstall iTunes on Windows 10 is that maybe, there are still related-apps and components that you haven’t deleted. Just to be sure, you can check and perform the following steps to completely get them off your computer:
- Open the Run Cmd and enter %programfiles%. You can also press the Windows key + R on your keyboard and enter the given command
- Find the following: Bonjour, iTunes, iPod
- Remove these files and go to the Common files folder on your C: you can find it under This Computer and then click C: and select Program Files. Find and click Common files
- If you see the Apple folder, click to open and find the following: CoreFP, Apple Application Support, Mobile Device Support
- Remove the said files
- If you are using Windows 32-bit, go to your Recycle bin and empty the folder
- For 64-bit, go back to C: and click Program Files (x86) and again find the following and delete: iPod, Bonjour, iTunes
- Open the common files folder and delete the following folders: CoreFP, Apple Application Support, Mobile Device Support
- Once you have removed those folders, go to your Trash and empty your Recycle Bin
You have now successfully uninstalled iTunes on your Windows 10 computer. The next time you are planning to reinstall it, you are now familiar with the related files and components and it will be a breeze deleting the said program.
Part 2. How to Uninstall iTunes Without iTunes.msi on Windows 10
If you are getting an error that your iTunes doesn’t have iTunes.msi file, this is perhaps the reason why you can’t uninstall iTunes on Windows 10.
Like the first solution above, we’ll go through all the iTunes components and its related-files so we can completely delete it off your system.
Follow this guide on how to uninstall iTunes without the iTunes.msi file on your Windows 10:
- Open the Registry Editor on your computer. You can do this by entering Regedit on your search box beside the Windows icon.
- When the registry editor opens, click Edit and then open the Find window and type iTunes64.msi. Check all the boxes under Look at to search thoroughly. Click Next
- After it finishes the search, it will route you to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products\{alphanumeric code}\SourceList
- Find and right-click on the parent key and select Export. Save the file and rename it to iTunes.reg
- Click on the codes a few times until you can finally remove it from the context menu to avoid including iTunes.msi when you are trying to uninstall iTunes
After you have fixed the iTunes.msi file from the registry editor, continue the process of uninstalling it via the control panel.
Part 3. Summary
Removing iTunes all its related components are highly essential when you are fixing iTunes or planning to re-install it later on. When you can’t uninstall iTunes on your Windows 10, you simply need to determine what went wrong or note down any error messages it displays.
The 2 solutions we gave above are the best methods you can use to completely delete the iTunes. The first is to remove it via the control panel and from the C: next is to fix the iTunes64.msi on the registry editor before you can completely uninstall iTunes.
Once you have carefully followed the steps then you can now uninstall iTunes without any issues. Have you done this before? What’s the easiest method you did to remove iTunes? Share it with us.
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