Summary of Issues: MDCrashReportTool, Backup, Sync, Preparing to Sync

bwadma wrote:

In reply to Northern-Survivor•

I face the "hanging sync iPhone to Mac" as well (iMac24-M1 14.2.1, iPhone-13mini 17.2.1), since the update to 14.2/17.2 - not before that update. System version 14.1.x / 17.1.x did sync OK for me.

• I always use the "old" USB cable connection, and I have "Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected" activated in the "iTunes" Finder window

• Yes, I do have (also) an AppleWatch (Watch-9 10.2)

• As reported e.g. at reddit, I had several times (but not always) success with activating Flight Mode on the AppleWatch when a sync was hanging at "Step 2 preparing to sync".

Do you mean you wait for the sync to hang and then turn Watch to Flight Mode?

Before attempting a sync I've tried:

/ power off the Watch

/ switch to Watch to Flight Mode (which also sets iPhone to Flight Mode)

/ unpairing the Watch

None of that makes any difference in my case.

As you say sometimes the sync is successful, but not always.

I can't find any reliable and repeatable workaround that doesn't involve a Force Quit or rename (or relocate) of the crash report tool.

Syncing over USB and disconnecting/reconnecting the cable remains my favoured option. It mostly works.

Dear Community

Don't get your hopes up, but for me ios 17.3 didn't solve the problem. Thank you Apple!

Looked for an update on iTunes (now on v. 12.13.1.3), but nothing.

Luckily the work around with the removal of "MDCrashReportTool" still works on my Windows 10 pc.

hitlength wrote:

They want you paying a subscription for Apple Music and for larger iCloud storage.

An alternative is iCloud Music Library. That requires an iTunes Match subscription, but iCloud Music Library is free and doesn’t count against your iCloud storage. You can stream or download songs from the Library to your Mac or iOS device ( it doesn’t use syncing ) . And iTunes Match is not as expensive as Apple Music.

Another alternative is to manage your music manually (check the box in the Finder , which turns off syncing) .

Darn, kudos to you for all your hard work though. As previously stated I've restarted using iMazing for local backups, since this thread began I have upgraded my iPhone and had some hopes that the issue might just go away, alas it's still the same.

My user ID on my mac is an Admin. If you are not an Admin you may not be able to rename Mac standard software.

If your Mac belongs to your company or is under administrative control by your company you may not be able to rename Mac standard software.

If the MDCrashReportTool is running you might not be able to affect the software on disk because it is in use. You would need to kill it, and ensure you do not start another sync so it does not get restarted, before trying to rename the program.

Note that the path to the tool starts at /Library (the Mac's Library) , not ~/Library (your account's Library).

The tool is actually embedded in an application tree, not the regular file system tree. The permissions in such a tree may be different from the permissions in the file system tree; I'm not sure how they work. The controlling permissions may actually be on AppleMobileDeviceHelper.app.

There are other system permission mechanisms that have prevented me from changing Mac software in the past, so I was rather surprised my user WAS able to change it.

Hello to all,

after updating all my devices to the latest versions (macOs 14.3; IOS 17.3; WatchOS 10.3) last Monday, backup and synchronization seem to be working again. I have synchronized my iPhone 3 times during this time and it went through flawlessly each time.

Best regards

Adam

I'm going to apologize upfront if what I'm about to write here doesn't fit into this category.

So for over a month now, ever since update to iOS 17.2, my phone (14 Pro Max) hasn't been able to properly sync with iTunes. For the time being I've been going into task manager (Windows 10 Pro PC) and ending the MDCrashReportTool process. That works. At least I'm able to add and remove music as I wish.

With that in mind I've now updated (January 26, 2024) to iOS 17.3 and the "passes" (concert tickets) from Ticketmaster are all disabled. Apple says it's a known issue and that they're working on it. That's what they said about the sync problem and that's still going on. I have a feeling they say that about everything.

The question I have then is, does one issue have to do with the other? Is the reason my tickets are disabled that my phone won't sync without force quitting the MDCrashReportTool? Anyone else experiencing this problem?

Apple support is of no help in this matter. All they could suggest was transferring my tickets to someone I trust with a Ticketmaster account, have them transferred back, re-add them to Apple Wallet. That didn't work.

If anyone has any suggestions on a fix, I'm all ears.

Thank you in advance to anyone who reaches out to help.

I think your observations do fit.

I suspect we’re seeing the infinite data set problem. That is, we have standard software - the operating systems and applications; yes they’re customisable to some extent by “settings”, but we’re all using the same software for any given version.

But we all use it differently, on different hardware, each users data (emails, music, photos, files etc, etc ) is unique to them. And there are millions of us. It’s an infinite data set. And it’s not a stable beast, every update of the OS and apps brings new features which we hope won’t disrupt existing features.

So how does Apple make sure everything still works as it should every time they make a change - and still works for all users. The answer is they can’t.

Sometimes glitches in the software show up in different ways , dependant on the data.

You have a problem with passes, I don’t, but I do have a rogue video file that is not in my Mac music library but it shows up in the music sync to my phone. Unique users with unique data, unique problems, individual workarounds, or no workarounds at all in some cases. If we’re lucky a workaround will work for multiple users.

It not surprising that Apple Support looks weak, they can only give generic advice, such as reboot your machine in Safe Mode, or reinstall stuff. It’s not tailored to your unique environment.

Occasionally Apple will identify a problem and fix it.

I empathise, I’ve spent hours playing with this issue , which ultimately led me to a solution (don’t sync that troublesome playlist), that works for me, and only me.

And my nearest Genius Bar is over 1000 miles away.

So sorry I can’t help. N-S

I use USB syncing for calendars (instead of using iCloud); all media are managed manually.

Since updating to Sonoma 14.2.x and iOS 17.2.x, the symptoms described above happen on my Mac.

A difference, however, is that after force-quitting MDCrashReportTool, the syncing proceeded until an alert displayed that said "Syncing with iPhone will change more than 25% of your calendars, events, or to dos on

this computer." In the alert, over 6,000 events were in the alert's Delete column.

Not wanting to risk losing calendar events on my Mac, I clicked the Sync later button. The sync failed…no relevant events on the iPhone.

Hi again

I can not even create a folder in that same location. I can of course move the file onto my desktop but that just creates a copy. I guess there must be some way for me to get a root user account or to use terminal to allow me to access this folder.

Hammer may be the only option.

The only way I can sync my new iphone15 pro is to force quit the MDCrashReportTool. Easy enough to do but really ... Without this discussion I would be sunk.

Thanks