Suddenly unable to view files on iPhone through Explorer?

I feel your pain.
I gave my second gen iphone to my girlfriend and when she plugs it in to my XP machine at home the camera transfer window pops up WITHOUT itunes.
from there she can copy any video or pictures to any folder on my PC
or delete any picture or video on the iphone.
HOW CAN WE GET A 3GS TO SHOW UP IN VISTA EXPLORER ???
That's it.
FrankieZee...

The iPhone will show up only if there are photos in the camera roll. If there are and it isn't showing up, and it does for another phone, it means that one or more photos in the camera roll is corrupted. Usually it's a photo imported from another app rather than one taken with the iPhone. The only solution is to delete photos from the camera roll until the phone again appears in Explorer. To preserve them email them to yourself before deleting.

I am in the same weird situation. It just happened. My guess has to do with Vista updates. From reading around it seems to be an iPhone Vista compatability issue.
An easy work around for you is to get your video off using a windows XP system. I think windows 7 should work too.
But no one on the web seems to have figured out a solution to this issue with Vista!!

While that is vaguely possible, it is much more likely that it is the same problem that many other people have experienced. It probably has nothing to do with Vista updates. The most common cause (as several messages above have said) is that you have a corrupt image file in the camera roll. Most likely one that you received as MMS or an email. If you have any such photos in the camera roll email them to yourself, then delete them. This will most likely fix the problem.

I have a new laptop with Win7 Ultimate, the iPhone camera icon appears in Windows Explorer (as a selectable drive) yet when I select it I don't get the photos. Instead I get "Internal Storage" which, when clicked, gives me a "DCIM" folder which, when clicked, gives me a "100APPLE" folder which, when clicked, is empty!

I can still browse the iPhone camera images in Windows Explorer on my old XP desktop PC! Interestingly, however, it doesn't always appear on my XP PC, sometimes I have to unplug and try again before it's available (but not always!).

Is my Win7 experience normal?

I had this same problem until today. I tried uninstalling all Apple software from my computer and re-installing; did not work. I tried all of the other tricks listed on this thread; did not work. I decided to just email all the photos and videos that I wanted to keep to myself (long and tedious), and deleted a few of them along the way (not all). I plugged my phone in intending to wipe it and see if a refresh worked and quite unexpectedly an Explorer window opened up with my remaining photos and videos ready to be copied/transfered. One post I read did mention something about a corrupt photo causing the whole problem and removing it resolved the issue. Well, that does appear to be the case for me, too. Interesting. Now if only I could figure out which image is bad so that I could have simply removed that ONE instead of spending all that time emailing my content....

I just wanted to say that in the past week my iPod was not showing up in explorer in XP. I tried uninstalling drivers, reinstalling drivers, adding the ipod as a camera etc but to no avail.

I just downloaded the DiskAid software that was posted by Jamalaya on the first page, ran it, located my pictures, copied them over and then deleted the pictures off my ipod. When I plugged it back in after deleting images it was instantly recognised as a camera again.

It's not a cable issue, nor an itunes issue or even a driver issue. It's been mentioned before in this thread but I can confirm that it has to be a corrupt image issue that's creating this problem. Simply use that software to copy your files off and then delete your photos until your computer recognises the ipod/iphone again.

After reading several posts other places and finally here, I was happy to see the possible solution being that a "corrupted" photo is in the camera roll. Of all the possible fixes, this was the simplest (tedious, but simple). I just deleted all but the most recent pictures from my iPhone's camera roll (one's I took, not saved from an email or MMS message), plugged it back into my PC and BINGO...the Windows Photo Wizard popped up just as it used to and the iPhone (as a camera) again appears in Control Panel > Scanners & Cameras. Thanks, I bet this is the "final solution"!