Home Sharing Broken in iTunes 10.5.3 (fixed)

Rob — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:14:01 +0000

[WINDOWS ONLY] After I updated to iTunes 10.5.3, I noticed that home sharing did not work at all. I took all of the steps at Apple’s support article (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2972) to no avail. Ultimately, I figured out that the problem is with 10.5.3 itself. Here is how to get Home Sharing working again:

Download iTunes 10.5.2 here:
32 bit: http://www.filehippo.com/download_itunes_32/11232/
64 bit: http://www.filehippo.com/download_itunes_64/11233/

Click on “Start” or the Windows Orb (depending on which version of Windows you are using) and click Run. If you don’t see “Run”, hold the Window key on your keyboard and press ‘r’. Enter the following text into the run dialog:
%APPDATA%\Apple Computer

Highlight all of the folders in the window that opens (Ctrl + a) and copy them (Ctrl + c), create a new folder on your desktop and call it ‘Apple Computer’. This is just a backup in case something goes wrong with the reinstall.

Once again, go to Start > Run (Window key + r) and type: appwiz.cpl

Look for iTunes in the list, and uninstall it. Once the uninstall is complete, double-click the iTunes installer you downloaded from File Hippo and follow the prompts. Once the installation completes, open iTunes and login to your Apple account when prompted, ensure that Home Sharing is turned on by clicking on Advanced in the menu (it should say “Turn off Home Sharing (YOUR ACCOUNT)” if Home Sharing is turned on).

That’s it.

Explorer: Executable files won’t launch

Rob — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:52:19 +0000

Recently, I have dealt with a few computers where malware had wrecked Windows Explorer’s handling of executable files. Whenever you attempt to launch an executable file, you are told Windows doesn’t know what to do with the file, sometimes being prompted to download the file you were trying to launch. Right-click the file linked here and save it to your desktop. Once it’s downloaded, right-click it and select Install. This should fix Windows handling of executable files. If you can’t get anything to launch, try showing file extensions by opening a folder or My Computer and selecting Tools > Hide extensions for known file types (uncheck the box); find the file you want to launch (e.g. “firefox.exe”), change the file extension to com (“firefox.com”). It could be that only the exe file handling has been wrecked.

More information from Symantec (source of the fix) here: http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-050614-0532-99

BIT Consultants » Windows XP

Home Sharing Broken in iTunes 10.5.3 (fixed)

Explorer: Executable files won’t launch