iPhone 15 Plus stuck in “Preparing To Sync"

Worked perfectly for me, thank you so much for working out a solution. I'm rather disgusted that this issue has been around for so long and Apple haven't sorted it out. I thought it was my new phone as I didn't have the problem syncing my iPad using the same Mac. We all pay a fortune for these Apple products and yet issues like this linger.

APPLE - SORT IT OUT!!!

Just a FYI and update for anyone having the issue of greyed out music after a sync and error message "This Song is not Currently Available in your Country or Region".. I just found a work-around. Make a slight change to the album title on your MacBook or PC, and try to sync again.. I finally found something that worked (for me) and thought I'd share..

Thanks xCowboy. Your solution worked for me. However this is very disappointing by Apple. I am somewhat cynical but it does seem like there is little incentive for them to ensure a smooth sync / backup process as they probably want to encourage us all to use streaming services and over the air backup services...

@apple please sort this out. it's not good enough.

Thanks. I have submitted a comment with a link to this thread. Really disappointed by Apple's neglect of these types of features in recent years. The bugs are unacceptable and a blight on their reputation.

I have a new Windows 11 Laptop and a clean install of iTunes. Every time I try to sync my iPhone 15 Pro I have to force quit the file MDCrashReportTool.exe and as expected the sync continues without a problem...

BUT (and this is weird) if I rename the file MDCrashReportTool.exe and start iTunes, that works fine, I get no warning or anything during a sync with the iPhone (which is great) ..... BUT the iPhone local (encrypted) backup does NOT show up in Edit-Preferences-Devices.

If I rename MDCrashReportTool.exe back to its original name, the local iPhone backup shows up when I next load iTunes! (but of course I then have to force quit MDCrashReportTool.exe whenever I want to sync my iPhone)

What the heck!

Go figure?

Why does Apple not sort this out - it's not as if it's a new issue or probably even difficult!

PS I do own an Apple Watch 7 if that makes any difference?

It also doesn't work on Monterey, which leads to believe that it's an iPhone issue. Perhaps, your work Mac has some sort of configuration that bypasses that? Not that it matters, as long as it's working correctly in your case.

I think the previous logic was that with a format of macOS or iOS would fix the issue. It's a hassle, but I guess it was a valid solution back in the day. However, now that the equivalent of "turning it on and off again" (format your device and set it up again) today doesn't work, hopefully Apple will fix it.

I'm also on Windows, and decided not to rename the MDCrashReportTool since I'm getting iTunes from the Microsoft Store, and wasn't sure what might happen if the MSStore decides to update iTunes -- would it restore the MDCrashReportTool at the same time? But I also didn't want to keep opening up TaskManager and hunting for the crash tool and killing it -- so I wrote this little PowerShell script to hunt for it and kill it for me. It's much more convenient. Here it is in case it helps anyone else:

$process = Get-Process MDCrashReportTool -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if ($process) {

$process | Stop-Process

} else {

Write-Host "MDCrashReportTool is not running."

}

Of course, this assumes you have PowerShell and know how to use it, but I figure, if you know how to open TaskMgr, you probably know how to run pwsh scripts too.

So my workflow is: connect my phone, start to sync it with iTunes, then run this script to get past the MDCrashReportTool blockade, and voila, no blockage. It's a little (but admittedly not a whole lot) easier than hunting for the process in TaskMgr, IMO.

This solution worked perfectly the very first time I tried it. Thanks you so much for putting it on here. I had a call into Apple support and was almost going to cancel it but decided to speak to him to tell him about the problem and explain that many people are having the problem and that a fix is needed. He said he noted the problem. I won't hold my breath waiting for Apple to come up with a fix, but so glad I saw your workaround solution. Thank you agian!

I’ve always thought that if it happens to him it gets fixed but on this I bet he doesn’t use anything but streaming and never touches iTunes or syncing. If he does sync I’m sure some minion does it. 🙄

Thanks so much!!! This saved me a lot. iTunes (12.9.5.5 on Catalina)) got stuck in Preparing to Sync and so I forced-quitted it. After that the iPhone (15 Pro) was no longer recognized by iTunes and the app was asking me to rest the phone to factory settings. Luckily, I didn't. Installed a new copy of iTunes (from Retroactive 2.0) and then got stuck again... I saw your solution and it worked beautifully. Phew!

That was excellent advice. I had been going through the task manager option and it would skip step 3 after doing the force quit of the CrashReport task. The only thing that I did different which may be self explanatory, I shut WiFi off on my phone first to force it to use the USB.

But thank you so much for the work around that actually works.

I am sure hoping, that next week, that the next iOS apple update will put a stop to this discussion and satisfy everyone with the fix. I think I will unfollow, as there have been no new revelations since the MDcrash workaround, which helps on a short term basis. Hopefully enough of us have posted to Apple themselves, reporting the problem

Canaanski wrote:

Sounds like this has to be done every time.

I don’t think anyone has come up with a “one time” workaround. Some folks think this problem is related to he Apple Watch. My theory is that it’s related to diagnostic and log data, which hangs around for at least a week and causes problems in the sync which causes the crash report tool to hang. But that’s just my WAG.

sal191 wrote:

Somebody buy xCowboy 🤠 a beer. This guy deserves the medal of honor. They will tell stories of how you worked out the Force Quit of "MDCrashReportTool".

Yes. It’s a long story.

How about this from 2008.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1622779?sortBy=best&page=2