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pmonahan Author

Level 1

0 points

iPhone applications no longer work

I have had my iPhone for over a year and never had the troubles I am having now. I have installed dozens of apps and have the same update problem as all of you in this discussion. Now, most of my apps will not work at all! The past week, I have had apps crash and the iPhone would go back to the home screen. A reboot, by holding down the power button until asked to turn off the iPhone would usually solve this, but now, after several reboots, none of the apps are working now. On top of this, yesterday, I was stuck in the Phone app. I could select a contact and view a map of the address, but I could never get back to the home screen or select any other app. What was even worse was the fact that I could not reboot no matter how long I held down the power button. I had to hold both the power and home buttons which did reboot, but I lost all my music and videos. I am not looking forward to going through the entire process of installing everything again! Web apps still work fine as well as all of the Apple apps, but none of the free or purchased apps from the App Store work now. I think I'll try deleting all apps off the phone and from my Mobile Applications folder except for the $20 worth of paid apps that I have and start from scratch. If that does not work, I'll try a complete Restore which is a last resort since that involves hours of resetting preferences, app locations, etc.. By the way, what is with the hour long iPhone backup when synching through iTunes. Is this a bug in the new version of iTunes? I do not recall long backups before the iTunes update. I hope we get iTunes 7.7.2 and iPhone 2.0.1 soon. I hate to say this, but I miss the old reliable and bug-free iPhone version 1.1.4!!! Any insight from those of you reading this would be much appreciated.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), Original 8 Gig iPhone, iTunes 7.7.1

Posted on Aug 2, 2008 11:40 AM

718 replies

Jun 5, 2009 8:14 AM in response to pmonahan

Hey all

I've had quite some experience with this particular issue on the iPhone.
I don't have time to read through the entire thread, so I'll just post the solution that I've found to work 100% of the time.

Now the issue (Just to clarify we're all on the same issue) is this;
-Tap on an App
-App opens to loading screen then crashes to homepage again

Solution I have used quite a few times when fixing iPhones;
-Plug phone into iTunes, right click on phone under devices on the left-hand side of iTunes,then click 'Transfer Purchases'
-After this is completed, delete 1 app on phone. (It does NOT matter what App,this is just to make iTunes re-sync the Apps)
-Sync Apps to iPhone
-Test

Hope this can resolve any issues you're having with 3rd party Apps

Regards,
Bryce Fraser

Jun 8, 2009 10:24 AM in response to pmonahan

I have been having the same issue. I think I am onto the fix. I think it is not working because the email address I have for I-Tunes is my personal email while the email address I gave AT&T when I set up my account is my business email address. So, when I synced my computer the apps I downloaded with my business email as the verifying email stopped working. I would fix it all, re-download them and everything would work. I would sync, the email would be different and everything would fail. I just changed my email address at AT&T. I will this forum and let you know if I have any success. Please let me know if you have a similar situation with your email so I can tell if I am hunting it the correct forest.

Ivan001

Level 1

0 points

Jun 12, 2009 11:38 PM in response to pmonahan

Argh, this issue still isn't fixed! I recently upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 GM Seed (legitimately and on a non-jailbroken phone). After a couple of days of use the only apps that would run were the Apple ones and the ones I have developed myself and were installed via XCode. All of the App Store ones only loaded their default screen and then quit.

I tried rebooting etc. But eventually managed to get it to work again by re-syncing (iTunes 8.2) and then adding a new app. (The re-sync alone didn't fix it.)

I hope this isn't the sign of problems to come with 3.0.
Ivan

Jul 15, 2009 3:57 PM in response to Ivan001

New iPhone 3GS... Same problem. I downloaded a free app and rebooted and that seems to have solved the problem for now...

molly49

Level 1

0 points

Jul 16, 2009 12:36 AM in response to pmonahan

after downloading the 3.0 software to my iphone 3G, ALL of my apps stopped working. They would start to launch and then they would stop. Ive tried every thing except complete restore. If anyone has this problem PLEASE help

Jul 19, 2009 12:13 PM in response to molly49

Hello as one might have guessed i was having exactly the same problem with my new iPhone 3G S, So this is what i did to get it fixed:

1. Re-Installed the app that first crashed
2. Uninstalled a large number of apps until I had only three pages worth remaining
3. Rebooted the iPhone

In my personal opinion this issue seems to be caused by having a large number of apps installed, I should also mention that the problem occurred when I was trying to launch one of the "Bigger Apps" (in particular Cro-mag racing) and I think that in my case it has nothing to do with the itunes or music for that matter.

Everything seems to be working for now but, I will try and keep you all up to date.

P.S. To all those who encounter this problem could you please describe it in more detail e.g. when did this error start or rather which was the first app to crash, and how many pages worth of apps did you have when the error happened, and to those who do mange to get it fixed (at least Temporary) could you please keep us up to date and post if the error happens again.

Thanks,

Luka

Jul 22, 2009 2:11 PM in response to pmonahan

Mmmkay., So this happened to my vanilla 3G 3.0 iPhone too. I do a fairly good write up of how it happened:

1. Started RDP.
2. RDP quited after I had connected to the computer I needed to connect to. I restarted it three times and it disconnected. RDP does this pretty often and it happens when the phone is out of memory.
3. To cure the out of memory issue I restarted the phone.
4. Once it came back up RDP crashed on boot and returned me to the home screen.
5. After a while I noticed that all the non Apple apps had this behavior.

*How I solved it*
Hard to say exactly what helped for me. Tried quite a few things and all with the help from this thread.

1. I transferred purchases. Removed one app and resynced and rebooted. Got some of the apps back.

2. Downloaded a free app and rebooted. No difference.

3. Deleted free app downloaded other free app and rebooted. No difference.

4. Signed out from my appstore account and signed in on my other one (have to accounts). Transferred purchases and installed an update I had waiting on that account. Now all apps works.

**** tedious and nervous but seems like I'm back now. Feels like a quite severe bug since people who have bought a lot of apps might loose em all?

nblaisot

Level 1

0 points

Jul 27, 2009 8:33 AM in response to NEO_Sweded

It's incredible that there still isn't a fix for this...

I have told many friends that the iPhone / iPod touch were great devices, they bought it because of me and I feel really bad about that. As I work in mobile telephony they turn to me to have solutions / advice, and I must admit I am still not able to find reliable/simple/reproductible solutions to help them fix this issue! 😟

I don't have the problem myself, fingers crossed...

Aug 11, 2009 5:42 AM in response to Steve with iPhone

Just wanted to say that Steve with iPhone's solution worked for me. Deleted and re-downloaded a free app, and everything worked fine after that. Very odd.

Aug 12, 2009 10:19 AM in response to pmonahan

Yes, you guessed it - I am having the same problem. After I installed patch 3.0.1 all of my 3rd party apps stopped working, same behavior - open and close. I am far from a casual user; I write apps for the iphone - and I've tried all the 'tricks' to fix this (restart, resync, remove sync partnerships, all the app settings in itunes, etc) and still am able to open apps. The only thing I haven't done is called mac support, but I would consider that giving in.

Aug 19, 2009 1:04 PM in response to drakee

I'm experiencing the same problems. First only one application didn't start, but now all 3rd party apps won't start.

iPhone 3GS, OS 3.0.1

legoz

Level 1

4 points

Aug 28, 2009 9:55 AM in response to supersonnig85

I am still on 3.0 and had this happen I went out and downloaded a new free app waited for it to install now all of my apps are working again.

Aug 29, 2009 9:58 AM in response to drakee

I, too, have had this same problem. Brand new iPhone 3G with 3.0.1 on my Apps stopped working right after I downloaded the ESPN ScoreCenter app, along with an odd crash...

RM00

Level 1

0 points

Aug 30, 2009 11:21 AM in response to Praying Colonel

After updating to 3.0.1 from ITunes 8.2.1 my 3rd party apps would not open completely, only to the splash screen and then crash. I deleted a free app and re-downloaded the app(Yahoo Messenger). From the app store, it asked me if I wanted to download the app again since i had already "purchased" it before, I said "ok" and the app downloaded. After this process the rest of my 3rd party apps worked as good as they did before the update.

I hope that everyone finds there solution to be as easy as mine.

Good luck!

PS. APPLE, WHERE IS MY MMS!!!

Sep 2, 2009 12:15 AM in response to RM00

Hic, I'm having the same problem even though I only have 1 page and a half of applications cos I just bought a 3GS iphone last week.

This afternoon, I downloaded 2 free apps and bought 3. First one app didn't work. After a few hours all the new apps stopped working. They all worked when I first downloaded.

Reboot didn't work and can't transfer purchase because itunes 8.2 said my computer is not authorized. I have PC.

So I don't know what to do.

Is it still a problem with all iphone and Apple has no solution?

iPhone applications no longer work