Yesterday an MS update was scheduled for my laptop so I installed over night.. 11 updates in all.

When I woke up I started my laptop and everything seemed fine except my tool bar was acting strange as in:

The quick launch was no longer showing just 4 with an extender button.. (forgive my terminology) but all 8 across the task bar.
The task bar was showing very small applications as in they were barely recognisable and the applications were all on the right rather than the left, for example the firefox window was about 1/6th it's normal size, and with a very random scroll button next to it??? Not sure either.

Then just to stick the boot in my iTunes had disappeared, all my music had lost it's iTunes logo and had gone to 'search for program' logos.   

Here's what I did to solve the problem.

I went back to my restore point and removed all the MS updates which returned most of the problems back to working correctly. My taskbar and quick launch were fine but iTunes kept coming back with 'some files are missing, please re-install iTunes'.

Not FEELING like re-installing iTunes to point 8.94gb of music back to it I decided to re-install the updates and rather than let it happen when I'm asleep I decided to take control.

After the update re-installed I checked iTunes, same thing 'files are missing'. All taskbar and quick launch problems were solved this time around, so no weird things.

I decided to force iTunes into an update by going into MS updates and checking recent updates and checking for any new ones.
iTunes update then kicked in and started downloading (about 105mb) and the PART where iTunes normally starts during the quicktime and iTunes  update the same 'files are missing' message came up, so I clicked OK to see what WOULD happen as I don't want to start again and the install continued.

The update finished and iTunes started working again with all my playlists etc intact.

I wrote this so that anyone else who had a similar problem can just search the CH search box for help with this. It certainly annoyed me no end.


Very helpful Mulreay...

Thanx for the heads up....