iPhone 3GS refuses to sync

i also reinstalled itunes and apple mobile device support after making the power management changes.it worked well. and today i upgraded to ios 4.0 to see the problem is back or not, seems there is no problem.

i'm going to write down what i've done from the beginnig so maybe you can find which solved that problem.

1 updated my bios

2 made my windows up to date

3 usb power management thing

4 i had change mobile device support folder in program files x86/common files/apple /mobile device support with the one in program files/common files/apple/mobile device support ( which didn't help at all)

5 i had reinstalled itunes than (but itunes had an error saying it needs newer mobile device support - so i uninstalled apple mobile device support from control panel-and uninstalled itunes too.

6 installed itunes- so mobile device support have been installed too.

7 connected my iphone (that was all)

8 i had updated my iphone to 4.0 but before that the problem was solved so i don't think ios 4.0 is the solution. it must be one of them listed above.

sorry for can't helping with exact solution

I was having similar problems. I tried a bunch of stuff... disconnect, reboot, restart Itunes. I am sure you've all done the same.

I googled and found some ideas. One suggested shutting down my firewall. Sounded dumb since I don't think usb could care less about the firewall. Guess what, it worked! Could it be coincidence? Was it just that I tried enough times and it just started working? Not sure, but it worked.

Good luck!

Exact same problems here, windows 7 64 bit with an iphone 3gs running ios4. Ime so angry about this.... I cant do anything with my overpriced useless iphone... i should have stuck with blackberry... Ime no newbie and i have tried EVERYHING to fix this issue and and spent days upon days of trying different fixes and nothing seems to solve the issues!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man, reading your post felt like I was writing it myself. After 2.5 hours in APple store, reinstalling itunes, replacing phone 2x they told me, they've never seen anything like it there's nothing they can do. They said must be a problem with itunes or windows. I was really hoping when I found this post, that it would end with a resolve, but nothing! anyone yet have thiis same problem on same operating system with no resolve. I found it will let me restore, but when I click restore from backup, I get all the errors. If I check set up as a new phone, I get them too. ALSO, to add. one thing no one has mentioned that I noticed, is after trying/failing to sync, itunes says my phone has a total of 4GB!
Does anyone have a similar problem/Fix???? help!

The only way i have found to get it to sync is to wipe all previous sync and backup date from itunes and it allowed me to sync, but i still couldnt sync music, vidoes or pictures, i managed to get 4 songs synced and thats it mind you it only took about 10 attempts of wiping and trying again.

I think I am having the same issue. I actually have a few issues...I updated my 3GS to the 4os software and after the sync was complete All seemed okay but I am not able to use my camera nor am I able to access my photos on my phone. It says "updating library" and then closed out of the application. Secondly, have an birthday calendar app that does not work anymore since my upgrade. And finally, I just tried to sync my phone again (A week later) and I get an error message: "iTunes could not back up the iPhone because the back-up could not be saved on the computer" I have 200GB free space on my hard drive so I know it is not a memory issue. Is this the same issue everyone is experiencing?

I just got a new 3GS the other day because I was tired of waiting for the iPhone 4, and after updating to the the iOS4, I can no longer sync up with me computer, which is a Mac. Kind of crappy tahat I only got to use it 1 day before this happened. I'm living in Japan, using Softbank as my carrier, so I don't think it's really AT&Ts, fault, but rather some shoddy computer programming of the software. I just hope they can put out a patch ASAP to fix this, because without being able to sync, the phone will lose all it's functionality as an iPod, watching movies on it, and updating new information from my computer in the form of updates.

Wish I hadn't downloaded OS4 . . .

Message was edited by: Ryan Schwenk

Getting exactly the same problem as everyone else. Just thought I'd throw in my lot.
Had my iphone over a year and apart from it randomly wiping itself once, this is the first major problem I've encountered.

Was gonna reset my phone, but I'm worried about my purchases as when I go to download in the app store it goes through a 'buying' dialogue and I don't want to waste money for something I've already bought! 😉

I'll try a few of the fixes here, but to be honest I'm really annoyed to have to be dealing with this, efforts perhaps better spent contacting Apple for replacement?

I'll post again if I have any helpful info...

I'm having all of the same problems! Was hoping to find a fix in this forum. I've tried everyone's suggestions and nothing has worked. I wish I would have never updated to the OS4, because I had absolutely no problems before. I was real happy with my iphone, now I'm aggravated! I hope someone comes up with a solution soon.

It's not an OS4.0 specific issue. I've not yet upgraded to OS4.0 and have had these issues (I posted previously). I had to get my old iPhone 3G back out of it's box as I can't sync my 3GS at all without it corrupting and having to spend 4 hours restoring the data. Anyhoo all was going well for a few weeks and now the 3G has the same problems and doesn't sync without errors too. It has to be iTunes. Is everyone else using iTunes 64-bit by any chance?? It's doing my head in, unable to sync music and stuff to update my songs - and the corruption issue makes my car stereo ipod dock display 'connection error' about 75% of the time. I know it's related as my 3G has been docking perfectly up until the sync with iTunes a few days ago where it had an error... So annoyed. I might not get an iPhone 4 as it will probably happen to that handset aswell, seeing as it's crapped up my 3G AND 3GS.

PS I just updated iTunes just now to 9.2.1. Fingers crossed this was one of the fixes.

The firewall was source of my sync problems also. iTunes refused to update the iOS to 4.0.1 and had to restore everything. Updated just fine after I turned the firewall off. After successful update I had trouble syncing music. While syncing it seemed to upload all the playlists just fine but after sync none of the music was to be found on the iPhone. Once again everything got solved when firewall was turned off.

This didn't happen before I updated ZoneAlarm to 9.2.057.000.

Apple released a new update which fixed 95% of my problems, its a step in the right direction. Download the new itunes update people!

This fix worked on my NV79 Gateway computer but I'm not too sure about other models. I did all the little tweaks previously suggested, (unchecking box in USB power options, Disabling Bonjour, etc.) I'm not entirely sure if these tweaks helped solve the issue or not. So if the following tweak doesn't work, try it in combination with the other already suggested tweaks. First, I apologize but i don't have my personal comp with me and I don't recall the exact name of some of the options. If you can't follow along I'll repost later with exact instructions.

With your iphone plugged in (after you've received all the error messages, Right click on computer > select manage > double click the option that contains the word "services" > double click "services" again > right click on the "apple" option and select restart > scroll down to the service that starts with "ipod" > right click and select restart. Close out this window and go back to itunes. After i did this, it synced up just fine with both my iphone4 and 3GS. However there were still a few wierd things that happened. Itunes popped up a small window that said it was syncing the phone, but the phone wasn't in sync mode. If I allowed this to continue, it would give me an error. But if i unplugged it to cancel the sync and plugged it in again (sometimes I had to restart those services after unplugging and sometimes not), it would properly sync with it showing in the itunes status bar. I now have to restart those two services everytime I turn on my computer to get the sync to work properly.

It also did the same thing if a separate small window popped up showing that it was backing up the iphone. So if i get any separate smaller windows in itunes, i unplug and reconnect until it only shows what it's doing with itunes in the status bar only.

I suspect that this is an issue with the computer not properly recognizing the phone because both my ipods have always synced up fine. I'm no computer expert, but i think that the computer turns off those two services once it recognizes the iphone as something else, like a camera when the auto play feature starts up. i've also heard that having at least one picture on your phone helps allow itunes to recognize it more easily. Not sure how true that is, but it can't hurt.