iTunes 12.13.3.2 Crashing During iPhone 14 Restore on Windows 11 Pro

I am an amateur ... smarter folks will hopefully jump in ...

but the first thing I would do is inspect my list of installed programs

and see if any/all of the following are installed:

1. Apple Music
2. Apple TV
3. Apple Devices for Windows

If they are installed, uninstall them, reboot, and try again.

I still no go, uninstall & reinstall iTunes

The programs above and iTunes do not play well together :-(

Jim

Wow. A big time "THANK YOU" to @janfromfarum for posting a solution to iTunes crashing while updating iPhone.

Some details of my experience, in case it helps someone:

iTunes crashed for me in Windows 11 in the "updating firmware" step of updating an SE3 to iOS 18.2. And crashed with every subsequent attempt to Restore the phone, which left the phone unusable.

Installing the .exe version of iTunes, AND running as admin, worked to restore to factory settings.

However after the factory restore, iTunes would not restore the phone to the "backup to this computer" I had done prior to attempting the iOS update - the [Restore Backup...] button was greyed out.

I was able to restore the backup by installing the Apple Devices app, and restoring it from there.

Okay so I've had the most frustrating day with this, but I figured it out. I was updating my iPhone 11 to IOS 18.2 through iTunes when it crashed leaving my phone stuck on Recovery mode. This was followed by my phone no longer showing up as a device in iTunes. These are the steps I took to fix it:

1. Uninstall Apple devices, Apple TV and iTunes
2. install the newest version of iTunes off of the web after having deleted the apps previously mentioned, and run it as an administrator (thanks @janfromfarum)
3. The iPhone should show up again, but the 'update' might not work so I clicked 'recover'
4. Once recovered, iTunes might say you never made a backup for your iPhone (don't worry you did, it can be found on your C drive under users-> YourUsername -> Apple -> MobileSync). Uninstall iTunes once again and install Apple devices
5. From Apple Devices you should be able to restore your backup, so let your iPhone do its thing after that

Main Takeaways here, iTunes and Apple Devices only seem to work properly when they are installed at separate times, and no deleting and reinstalling these apps won't get rid of your backup. I hope this helps and I hope Apple fixes this issue soon. Cheers.

Yes!

THANK YOU.

I had major, long problems updating my iPhone 13 Mini from 18.1.1 to 18.2 today - hours of frustation.

iTunes (up to date, as I came to discover - it was not immediately evident in the original program) on Windows 11 Home crashed repeatedly during the update, leaving the iPhone stuck with about 2mm of progress on the Update screen - that or the restore screen. I tried repairing and resetting the program, two cables, different USB ports (and types of port), the Vol up/ down/ side-button reset several times in the course of the other changes ...

I installed the Apple Music and Devices apps - no joy there, even with Azeem's guidance in the MSoft store to uninstall iTunes before installing Devices - before seeing janfromfarum's post here. Out went the Music and Devices Apps, in came the .exe version of iTunes, and the download was repeated - after which the installation went ahead without any problem whatsoever.

I am mightily relieved.

Thanks again, janfromfarum !

Thank you very much @janfromfarum and @appleetr2007.

I had to:

1. Uninstall iTunes
2. Reinstall iTunes https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win64
3. Run iTunes as Administrator
4. Restore iPhone (15) - That have me a factory reset iPhone
5. No backup available via iTunes even though the file exists
6. Uninstall iTunes
7. Install Apple Devices from Microsoft Store
8. Restore most recent backup (found on your C drive under users-> YourUsername -> Apple -> MobileSync) which takes FOREVER
9. Cross fingers and say may prayers
10. It worked!
11. But, still the iPhone needs updates on all the apps and some settings need to be redone.

Thanks again to people that provided such good info. It saved me a trip to the Genius bar tomorrow.

Have a happy holiday and a great new year.

What a find this has been - also fixed similar issue for me:

• Using iTunes from Windows App Store (latest, no update available)
• Attempted update to iOS 18.3.1 on iPhone 14
• iTunes quit with 2-3 mm progress bar indicated on phone - iTunes on 'Updating iphone firmware'
• Leaving phone requiring hard restart - then stuck in an update loop, as above.

Uninstalled iTunes, rebooted, installed latest Apple iTunes (12.13.4.4).

iPhone restore (via iTunes update) worked first time. Took a while, but the phone was then able to successfully recover data independently - no need to restore from iTunes backup.

Soooooo many thanks to you @janfromfarum

Had the same problem.

Removed the Microsoft Store version of Itunes and installed the .exe version. Ran it as Administrator and then it worked.

https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win64

Hmm. We-ell, cappellof, I have an iPhone 13 mini (is it so very different from a 13?) which was running iOS 18.1 . I was trying to update to 18.2 when I had my problem a few days ago. I followed janfromfarum's instructions, and the version of iTunes I received by download is v. 12.13.4.4, which was the same as the one I had, but the Apple .exe version succeeded where the other one failed. Should you still have the problem from October - do you? - do give the Apple site another go, BUT FIRST remove Apple Music and Apple Devices, should you have them installed on your PC. Those two programs and iTunes seem not to go well together, possibly because of a contention of access to the Library (at least).

My 13 mini is now running iOS 18.2, thanks to janfromfarum's guidance and the version of iTunes for Windows on the Apple site.

I had the same issue on windows 11 pc, repeated attempts just fills up memory with temp update files. This was iTunes from Microsoft as Apple sends you there to download iTunes. On a pc with an old Apple version of iTunes the iPhone restored properly without iTunes closing in the middle and freezing phone. Once the phone was restored, I was still able to restore files from backup on pc with windows iTunes.

I thankfully stumbled across this forum while I was experiencing the same problem as @umogavis above, and after reading all the other positive trials here I decided to give it a try and it did work for me too.

Before you do anything, it will be very important to first put your iPhone into recovery mode so you can restart the updating process. Recovery mode is NOT the same as restoring your phone, so don't worry, you will not lose your data while you are doing this. You can find the steps here: If you can't update or restore your iPhone or iPod touch - Apple Support (CA). You can do steps 1-4 while the .exe version of iTunes is installing, and then do steps 5-6 once iTunes is ready to use again, and you are able to connect your iPhone to your computer.

I can confirm that uninstalling iTunes from my windows PC (via settings) and installing the .exe version provided by @janfromfarum was the right solution for me after putting my iPhone into recovery mode. I did not have to uninstall anything else, or install any other additional applications during the process, only iTunes.

Once I got the .exe version installed and ran the application as Administrator, I was able to pick up right where I left off - iTunes recognized that my iPhone was connected to my computer and was in recovery mode, and prompted me to either update the phone, or if updating was not possible, restore to factory settings.

Thankfully, I was able to choose the "update" option, and the update to iOS 18.3.1 was able to install smoothly and completely. I did not need to restore my phone from a backup.

Thank you so much for providing this solution

Good news! I was able to restore my iPhone by plugging it into a different PC

Had the same issue during update. Uninstalled itunes (the one i downloaded from microsoft store) delete every files related to it and softwares as well (Apple Devices) then install the one this hero attached. Run it as administrator and give the software every permissions it needed. First try i clicked "update" and didn't work, second try i closed the pop up dialogue telling me to update and click "Restore iPhone" and it finally worked!!! Thanks bro. U definitely deserve a medal

Thank you very much for good suggestions. My Iphone15 froze during IOS update about half way through. Thereafter neither ITunes nor Apple Devices would recognize the phone. Followed the suggestions to remove all Apple software on the PC and then install the downloaded exe file as Admin. Had to make three attempts at installing IOS before it worked. It stopped at firmware update and also received a mysterious error75 which seems not to exist when looking up error codes on the Apple support pages. My conclusion is that iTunes and Apple Devices are definitely not compatible and you can only have one of these installed at any point in time. Secondly, always re-start PC after installing Apple software. I lost last 2 months of photos and need to re-install apps etc., but better than having to replace a one year old phone…

WOW what a long day. You saved it with this fix listed. Running the install of iTunes in Administrator Mode was the fix. Pryor it didn't like one of the files saying it was older than the installed.

It was the same version of iTunes 12.13.3.2, but running on my old laptop. It’s possible my problem with iTunes crashing was caused by the fact that my new Microsoft laptop uses an ARM64 CPU, and iTunes runs in x64 emulation mode on it. The old laptop has an x64 CPU, and iTunes runs native on it with no problems.