If I wasn't attached at the hip to iOS devices I would gladly put every known iTunes developer to the sword. But I am, and Apple don't seem to be listening to my calls to buy MediaMonkey.
So I have to put up and shut up (well, not so much shut up).
My Windows 7 install of iTunes has been misbehaving. Very slow to start and between it and the AppleMobileDevice service stealing 100% of the CPU. Killing the AMD service made the machine usable, just.
Eventually looked into the issue and low and behold plenty of reported problems. And all the solutions were to run 'netsh winsock reset' << Wait, what!, I seriously have to reset the settings back to default?
Apparently different apps clash, Apples bonjour service being particularly susceptible. Getting
Autoruns and clicking the Winsock tab only showed bonjour and
HMA VPN server (highly recommended) entries. This machine is close to a rebuild when Windows 8 is on general release so what the hell.
Ran the command, reboot and bingo. iTunes restored, HMA Winsock entries gone, but HMA still working (?)
Did some more reading and it seems any type of networking problem will lead to netsh winsock reset. Not sure after, cough, many years of being in tech I've never come across this before.
netsh winsock reset = swiss army knife of Windows.