iPhone - Stuck "Preparing to sync" when trying to sync with iTunes via USB cable

After all the comments yesterday that it wasn't working, I figured I should check so I tried it again. This morning, it is still working for me. I'm not seeing MDCrashReporter even start in Activity Monitor. It does take the sync a few minutes to get past step 2) and 3).

I could be wrong, but just killing the process may not be a total solution. I am trying to sync my iPhone 14 Pro with iTunes on my Windows 11 PC. Sure enough, when I kill MDCrashReportTool, "Preparting to synch" finishes up quickly but only items from my phone synch to outlook. Items added to outlook are not synching to my phone. I do not know if anyone else has noticed this. I have not tried it with ios 17.3.

I'm not sure if I found a solution, but I stumbled upon something that seems to be working.

What I did up to this point was to reset my iPhone settings & start fresh. This didn't nuke my data, but it did remove all of my personal settings.

After that I downloaded iTunes fresh from apple.com/itunes & ran an admin repair from the exe file.

I also went to C:\Users\"Your User Name"\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\iTunes & renamed the iPodDevices.xml to iPodDevices.xml-old

Finally, I went to the Windows Settings & ran a repair on Apple Mobile Device Support then restarted Windows.

Somehow I managed to get my iPhone to run a backup, but I did have to stop the MDCrashReporter.exe file when it started up in the task manager.

I don't know how to explain it in less technical terms, but I might have found the workaround to get our iPhones to backup in iTunes. At least for Windows.

All I will say is when I ran diagnostics in iTunes the Apple iTunesHelper File & iPod Device Service wasn't running at all.

I hope this helps! Upvote me if it does! :D

TechAzn.

Even though I nuked my settings on my iPhone, eventually I remembered that MDCrashReporter is a very old piece of legacy Windows software. So it would make sense that some code might be legacy based & not work with Windows 11 properly. I've had this issue with other software that was designed for Windows. I'm glad I could help! I'm not called the TechAzn for nothing! YAY!!!

For the Windows store install version, with the files located at:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

Tried your fix in Windows 10 x64 22H2, no effect unfortunately. Will keep using the taskkill workaround.

Can't possibly be the solution. iTunes runs in seconds and perfectly with the iPad. ONLY gets hung at "preparing to sync: on iPhone 17.2 or 17.3 Cannot be an itunes issue or iPad would suffer as well.

17.3 iOS update changed something for me as before turning watch on or off made no difference in sync hanging at part 2.

But now turning off watch does allow complete cycle of sync to work properly.

I have done this with USB C cable on MBP M1 Max running Sonoma 14.3 (latest) and wireless and it now works either way.

Checking items synced shows it all works along with the “Analytics Data” list to be cleared out as it should. Something that stopped when the syncing stopped.

Odd that it hangs from Apple Watch. I’m going to try unpairing watch then pair again to see if that helps. If it doesn’t I’m going to try taking it off my network to see if that makes a difference.

Along with until most recent iOS update having watch on or off played no role in sync working.

On another note users filling out an Apple Issue is the only way this gets to Apple engineers do it can be addressed.

Happens to me all the time. I hate it. I just want to sync my audiobooks.

I read on another thread how to solve it and it works GREAT.

Force Quit the MCD CrashReport in the activity monitor. (I use the search field to find it)

it works each time. not my favourite way of fixing it - and it should work without this work around. But this work around works.

The preparing to sync step went rather quickly. When the entire process completed I verified that all the data synch’ed correctly. The watch OS version is now 10.3. I’m running iTunes on Windows 11.

Sorry, can't help with that but I can tell you that the new Apple Music app and the Devices app do work together and NO NEED to kill anything!

I was nervous about the Music app but it has worked fine and hasn't screwed anything up in my Library (I don't use the online Apple Music, just use it to manage my own music). Of course it means you have to use TWO apps - one to add music and then the other one to sync to the phone, so it's entirely a win.

I can't vouch for these changes solving anything for people just using it to sync calendars etc

iTunes I thought that this was to be a better simpler solution to managing my music on various platforms in this modern world bha, in particular my sound Apple play system in my van, my iPod 2007 is not supported, okay fair enough but why is it impossible to get my tunes onto a flash drive to play on Apple Play, it is not exactly enthralling to purchase expensive kit that goes out of date after a short period, no wonder people are broke mentality and out of pocket, while the top tear sup champagne 🥂 and guzzle caviar,

Quick Update:

Having tried moving to the new Apple Music / Apple Devices set up it quickly became clear that a) this didn't solve the "preparing to sync" issue and b) it introduced several other sync issues. A (very protracted|) chat with Apple support had the following conclusion - 1) unless you have an active Apple Music Subscription the sync won't work properly, even if you don't use Apple Music (the subscription) and only use your own music in your library and 2) you can't now go back to iTunes as it will only contain audiobooks and podcasts after the transition.

So Apple effectively said that unless I paid them for an Apple Sub, syncing my music to my (expensive) iPhone was over!

This turned out not to be entirely true as removing EVERY reference to Apple on my Windows 11 PC DID allow me to reinstall iTunes (from the Windows Store) and it has gone back to the way it was. Music syncs OK, it didn't mess up my library but, of course, the "preparing to sync" issue still persists. Leave it running and it does eventually move on, or continue to use the kill switch if I need it to be quicker.

I'm not convinced Apple will ever sort this out. They seem determined to want everyone to have an Apple Music sub and I'm not prepared to pay for one, even to see if it DOES then sync my own library properly.

No idea if the Apple Devices app allows for syncing to iPhone if you don't want to include music - that may work fine.

ainsley001 wrote:

A (very protracted|) chat with Apple support had the following conclusion - 1) unless you have an active Apple Music Subscription the sync won't work properly, even if you don't use Apple Music (the subscription) and only use your own music in your library

If I understand well, this doesn't seem to align with my experience. I do have an Apple Music subscription (for Apple Classical essentially) but the Mac session I am using to synchronize does *not* have Library Sync / iCloud Music Library enabled (I guess there is a similar setting on PC). And yet despite my Apple Music subscription, I have the "Preparing to sync" issue. I need to mention though that it tends to resolve itself if I'm patient enough to wait for 3-5 minutes for some timeout to expire probably, and then the sync process proceeds to subsequent steps through to its completion.

ainsley001 wrote:

I'm not convinced Apple will ever sort this out. They seem determined to want everyone to have an Apple Music sub

It does feel that way indeed, alas. I did have a massive iPhone back-up problem where local back-up (through Mac Finder like iTunes on PC) would take dozens of GB including unnecessary duplicates of iCloud Photo Library despite what the documentation says. Several "very protracted" (again) phone calls with Apple Support only led to the conclusion that they wouldn't fix it to behave how the official documentation said it should, and my only solution was to switch to iCloud backup. It did feel like I was pushed to forgo local computer sync because Apple employees don't use it any more (they might even have an OKR on that), so they don't care whether it works or not.

If I understand well, this doesn't seem to align with my experience. I do have an Apple Music subscription (for Apple Classical essentially) but the Mac session I am using to synchronize does *not* have Library Sync / iCloud Music Library enabled (I guess there is a similar setting on PC). And yet despite my Apple Music subscription, I have the "Preparing to sync" issue. I need to mention though that it tends to resolve itself if I'm patient enough to wait for 3-5 minutes for some timeout to expire probably, and then the sync process proceeds to subsequent steps through to its completion.

I never tried it with an Apple Music sub but finding out that actually it makes no difference does make me feel slightly better. Tbh, I never felt that the (otherwise very nice and helpful) person I was chatting to actually understood the real problem. She suggested that Apple Music/Apple Devices apps would stop allowing me to sync at all without a subscription (which didn't happen) and also that going back to iTunes was now impossible (which isn't the case).

Update:

Been seeing reports that iOS 17.4 update fixes the issue. Previously I modified the file extention for MDCrashReportingTool.

I updated to iOS 17.4. Changed the file extention of MDCrashReportingTool back to .exe. Ran a sync and the process worked. No stalling on "preparing to sync".