itunes error (-34)

This is completely guesswork, but the -34 occurred on my 3G update also. Once it had failed a couple of times, I noticed that the "downsample music to 128k AAC" option had become unselected. I have the whole library syncing activated and there's about 20G of stuff there. When the downsampling is enabled, it gets squeezed to about 12G on the iphone, so it fits. So my guess is that the restoring process didn't think my library could fit on the phone and bailed out.

As to the fix, I didn't write it down so there's bound to be an error here somewhere:
1) BACK UP YOUR BACK UP DIRECTORY in Library/Application Support/MobileSync
2) When the restore process once again complains of -34, select the middle choice (which is not cancel and is not retry, something like delete backup)
3) Now "restore" in the iphone info page
4) Make sure that the downsampling is again enabled
5) Sync

4 & 5 may have been automatic, but the resulting resampling and sync took maybe 8-10 hours on my tired old Mini.

This definitely seems to be related to space available on the iPhone.

I had mine syncing from one playlist that was well over the 16GB on the phone, with the compress to 128kb/s option on.

After the upgrade to iOS4, my music wouldn't sync, with the -34 Error. I fixed the issue by creating a new, empty playlist, adding some music (not all that was there before) and syncing to that instead of my old one. (Just reticking the compress option on the old playlist gave me loads of file not found errors).

Ditto. Exactly the same situation with me too. Hope Apple is keeping an eye on this forum and are able to find a resolution to this quick.
I work in a leading Gulf news paper and will be doing a report on this.

Regards

i had the same exact problem with syncing my music and videos after updating to ios 4 and i tried many solutions none of which worked for me. so i finally just contacted apple directly and what they ended up doing was sending me all my previously purchased items on itunes back to my itunes remotely and told me withing 10 mins i will be able to download them again and it will sync to my phone with no problem. only downfall to this solution is that it takes a long time to download if you have an abundance of items like myself and then after download you still have to sync them to your iphone which takes more time. so only take this resolution if you have PLENTY of time on your hands. hope this helps some of you. i'm totally satisfied being that i have an itunes account on my work computer and i work over 10 hr shifts at a time so i have plenty of time to let itunes download and sync over 8Gigs of material. Happy trails!

Spent quite a bit of time with this yesterday. By the time I got to level 2 support, I had read the post above (key step: <Delete Backup>), which actually solved the problem.

Here's my understanding: this update on a 3G phone requires a Restore to factory settings to put the new OS on, then you need to restore from your backup, including EVERYTHING - the error seems to be with iTunes somewhere along the way trying to create another backup, which gets hung up - that's the one you're deleting - then you can restore all you settings and content from your last backup from before the update.

Do this at a time when you won't need the phone, because if you have a lot of music that needs to be compressed, it takes hours.

This forum seems to have caught on before tech support....

I am a little afraid to delete and restore, but maybe thats the best way... lets see...

Well what about the apps not working on the phone. At this stage even after the error my iPhone has IOS4 on it but none of the apps work apart from the native apple apps... Does your phone run apps after the IOS4 install?

I had this error msg. It was because I didn't have enough space on my drive where Itunes was on. It is a partition with only 20GB. So, I deleted a bunch of stuff from that drive and also a bunch of stuff from my Ipod Touch (3g, 8gb). And then it worked perfectly.

Hope this helps people. I believe the issue is probably as simple as that for most people.

Just to let you know: I got the same error -34. I had enough local disc space but on my 8GB-iPhone 3G I had the option to reduce audio to 124k.
Therefore I believe the problem description is like said before: The update resets this 124-option and crashes because the music does not seem to fit on the phone.

So thanks to olli.v I was able to update my iphone properly... but it didnt work out well. I finally had to reinstall it -- which turned out to be not to bad to do.

olli.v wrote:
This is completely guesswork, but the -34 occurred on my 3G update also. Once it had failed a couple of times, I noticed that the "downsample music to 128k AAC" option had become unselected. I have the whole library syncing activated and there's about 20G of stuff there. When the downsampling is enabled, it gets squeezed to about 12G on the iphone, so it fits. So my guess is that the restoring process didn't think my library could fit on the phone and bailed out.

As to the fix, I didn't write it down so there's bound to be an error here somewhere:
1) BACK UP YOUR BACK UP DIRECTORY in Library/Application Support/MobileSync

Note: there war only one folder in this. I renamed it to deactivate it.
Maybe I should just have copied it? The file-dates all where from a view minutes ago so the folder didnt look like an incremental backup but like one big backup. But I dont know.

BTW: Restoring the folder didnt work so I would bother to much 🙂 (see below).

2) When the restore process once again complains of -34, select the middle choice (which is not cancel and is not retry, something like delete backup)

I did.

3) Now "restore" in the iphone info page

I am not shure which page this is but I think it is the iphone-front-page that you see when you plugin your iphone?

The problem with this: I could not restore to an older backup. I just had an very old iPod backup in this list.
I tried renaming my backup-folder again to its old name but iTunes didnt notice the change after restarting the app.

So I decided to make a fresh install.
I lost some app-data which dont get saved… but apart from that everything is fine afert an hour of config.

Thanks
Regards

same here!

I think it could be due to a lack of memory in my computer...

what do u think?

thx!

Add me to the list. iPhone 3G on a PC running Windows 7 with a TB of HD space and 4 GB of RAM.

Same problem here. Any word about a fix yet. I've installed iOS 4.0 on iPod Touch 2d Gen. It syncs the applications fine, but gives an error when syncing podcasts or music.

Same with me... Won't find my Music and Podcasts...
Also tells me it is connected to an other Mediathek.