iPhone won't sync or appear on my laptop

A few things to try.

1. with the iphone connected, open system profiler and see if the iphone or unknown device registers under hardware > usb

2. Create a new user account with system preferences > accounts. Log into the new account and connect the iphone to se if it shows up.

3. Power off the iphone then connect to the computer while holding in the home button. Keep the home button in for a minute or two to see if itunes gives an error about an iphone in recovery mode. If itunes detects an iphone in recovery mode, restore the iphone.

4. if the previous 3 did not work, try connecting the iphone to another computer. if it shows up on another computer, then there is an issue with the first computer. If it does not show up on the second computer then there is an issue with the iphone.

Hope one of these helps out.

Hi,

Your 3rd point seemed to work at first and i really started getting my hopes up but then it all stopped and it said "unknown error occurred (1604)" and then it just asked to restore it again. I've tried a couple of times but the same thing happens. On the plus side, the computer knows it's there now so i guess that's one hurdle but i'm not closer to updating it. It seems that ever since i got Leopard i haven't been able to update (just one of the problems that have started coming up).

Thanks for your help.

For the unknown 1604 error, this article from the apple support website might help out.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307007

Hope this helps.

Refer to my post here, I think it might help.

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7127665#7127665