ITS FIXED!
thanks to the posting on this page:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6313773
which i will repost here. if you use windows and your camera aint working, try this, it totally worked for me. yeah!
jkeegan
Posts: 2
Registered: Jul 5, 2007
Re: Camera will not save pictures to phone after snapping photo
Posted: Dec 4, 2007 12:30 AM in response to: resourcesforlif...
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I have a third option..
I saw this message, and cringed at option #2 (which is simply to erase all settings and content after syncing).. I didn't want to lose contact photos, calendar events, sms messages, notes, safari bookmarks, etc, etc.
So, I went in and found (on my windows laptop) where iTunes was storing the backup files:
C:\Documents and Settings\jkeegan\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
That dir had two directories beneath it, with long hash filenames..
One seemed to be for an earlier version of the software, and the other for the latter. I synced my iPhone with iTunes, and saw the newer of those two directories get updated slightly, so it seems they're storing one backup per version.
I copied the directory (maintaining file permissions and dates etc) into another directory off t the side, to use as a backup if I had to.
Then I went into that newer backup dir and just started looking through these files for anything that looked like it had to do with photos..
One file, which for me was named f1b43d3b3ecf259a3626c13a8b0cebd8ba513117.mdbackup, seemed to talk about image numbers for photos.. The broken version of this file looked roughly like:
============
bplist00<D4>^A^B^C^D^E^F^TPathWVersionTDataXGreylist_^PESCMedia/DCIM/.MISC/Info. plistS1.0O^Q^A><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>LastFileGroupNumber-100</key>
<integer>1024</integer>
<key>LastFileGroupNumber-101</key>
<integer>170</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
^^@^Q^@^V^@^^^@#^@,^@J^@N^A<90>^@^@^@^@^@^@^B^A^@^@^@^@^@^@^@ ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^A<91>
============
So, I disconnected my iPhone from the dock, and then tried deleting that file from the actual Backup directory that iTunes looks at.. I reset the iPhone according to option #2 (Settings->General->Reset->Erase All Content and Settings).
When I connected it to the dock, it asked which backup I wanted to use, and I said the most recent. It updated everything, and now the camera works (I had no photos on the phone - the initial problem coincided with me deleting all photos on the iPhone after extracting them). I didn't lose any contact photo images, sms messages, etc - nothing.
To find that file for you, you can try doing a "grep Info.plist *" in the backup directory with the most recent modification time after doing a sync to back up. (I'd make a backup of the entire Backup directory before trying what I did).
I hope Apple fixes this, along with the other documented camera problems.. but at least here's a workaround that doesn't result in you losing everything.
