Win8 error "itunes has stopped working"

Recently itunes started crashing in Windows 8 64 bit with the generic error "itunes has stopped working" and then something about Windows trying to find a solution.  Of all the fixes I found online only one worked, installing an older version of itunes.  But first I made sure to uninstall the present itunes and then made sure the actual program files\itunes folder was fully removed.  Good luck!