Oh yeah....forgot it was MCE (a really dead OS).

One aside:

Disable in Services, not msconfig.

.....carry on.

10-4.  I meant to say Services.  Yeah, that's right.... that's what I meant.

Found only 3 Media Center specific services which I disabled, but no improvement in performance and iTunes still doesn't 'see' our iPhones.

99% of this thread is well beyond me, but anytime I see laptop performance 2 things immediately come to mind:

Does it have enough physical RAM on it - not unusual that they ship skimpy

When was the last time the hard drive was defragged - a drive can have lots of free space and still be fragmented into oblivion

Thanks for chiming in, DaveRI.  It's an XP machine with 2GB of RAM which was suitably zippy in its youth.  And I have SmartDefrag2 running on it.  FWIW, it has >50% free space on the HD.

It has another issue, it just occurred to me, which might have a bearing.  For some time now, the CD drive has been inaccessible - can't play a music CD or install software from it.  Since neither have been needed for many moons, hadn't thought about it.

I think that you should scan for malware (if you haven't tried with a few different tools)... FCleaner has an online scanner, Malwarebytes' app, and run a third as well. http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-anti-rootkit.aspx and http://free.antivirus.com/rootkit-buster/  for any rootkits....

I still wonder if you installed that MS 'fix' or subsequent MS Security update vs. Duqu - as they would pevent sfc /scannow from running to completion.

Hey, Doc.  I've run MWB multiple times, always comes up clean.  The Mr. Fixit utility that Gary pointed me to wouldn't run on XPMCE - the site prompted with that message & declined to let it run, I didn't 'try it & it failed'.

Not sure about the MS Security update vs. Duqu - that was rather recent, wasn't it?  The performance & CD issues have been around a long time; the only new/recent issue is the failure of iTunes to see our iPhones.

The first patch (work around) appeared 11/2011.

The "update" appeared in 12/2011.

The problem with seeing the iPhones is only since some time in January, so we'll see if Gary thinks those security updates might have anything to do with it.  No problem with iTunes seeing the phones on my Win7 rig, though, & presumably the updates applied to both OS's.

Doubtful

Disconnect it  

I'll assume the iPhone connects. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/acrosync-wifi-sync-all-your/id428846549?mt=8 Try the free version, see if it syncs via wi-fi.

As for a USB tether....is iTunes opening when you plug in and drawing a blank?

Start/ All Programs/ Accessories/ Scanner and Camera Wizard

iPhone show there by chance?

Download and install appropriate drivers fix that?