iTunes gets stuck when finishing sync

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Level 1

7 points

iTunes gets stuck when finishing sync

Apparently out of nowhere last week, my iPhone (4.3.1) and iTunes (10.2.1) on Mac OS X (10.6.7) have developed an issue with the sync.

I plug the phone in, the sync starts, does the back up, music, photos, calendars and so on, but then I get the stripey progress bar with a message saying "finishing sync" and then it hangs.

I've searched and tried a few of the obvious hints - I've reset the phone, rebooted the Mac, run software update, all the start level one FAQ responses.

If I swipe to cancel on the iPhone, it is fine - everything's updated properly, but then I get a beachball on the iTunes and have to Force Quit and restart.

Neither had been updated with new versions immediately before the problem, so I'm looking for other causes.

One thing I'm wondering is whether it is possible to get iTunes to produce a diagnostic trace log of everything it does during a sync so I might be able to see whether there's an obvious cause (maybe there's a newly installed app on the iPhone that's trying to do something or similar?)

MacBookPro 15", Mac OS X (10.6.7), iPhone 4 iOS 4.2.1, iTunes 10.2.1

Posted on Apr 10, 2011 3:10 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 18, 2011 5:50 PM in response to unsliced

I have been having the same problem with my iPad and iPod Touch. Your question prompted me to open Console and I found the following system log message repeating every minute since the "Finishing sync" message came up:

Jun 18 17:43:03 MiniRoss com.apple.usbmuxd[58]: HandleUSBMuxDictionary client 0x1018012f0-iTunes/com.apple.iTunes using library usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:19:31, running usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:20:21

Jun 18 17:43:15 MiniRoss com.apple.usbmuxd[58]: HandleUSBMuxDictionary client 0x100328570-iTunes/com.apple.iTunes using library usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:19:31, running usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:20:21

Jun 18 17:43:15 MiniRoss com.apple.usbmuxd[58]: HandleUSBMuxDictionary client 0x101801de0-iTunes/com.apple.iTunes using library usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:19:31, running usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:20:21

Jun 18 17:43:15 MiniRoss com.apple.usbmuxd[58]: HandleUSBMuxDictionary client 0x100328570-iTunes/com.apple.iTunes using library usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:19:31, running usbmuxd-211 built on Jan 13 2011 at 04:20:21

I don't know what the message means, but it seems to indicate a USB problem?

When I finally "Force Quit" (after eject and quit and other things didn't work) I got the following similar message:

Jun 18 17:43:39 MiniRoss com.apple.usbmuxd[58]: MuxSendToClient send failed for 0x5-d4a773023e699d31155368da25ff39b2b955ea44@0x26210000:50170->0x1018028b0-iTun es/com.apple.iTunes:54025: 32 - Broken pipe

Maybe this will make sense to someone else.

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Answer 2

Jan 27, 2012 1:27 AM in response to unsliced

Same issue. I am using iTunes 10.5.3.3. While syncing BOTH my iPhone 4 (5.0.1) and iPad 2 (5.0.1) the syncing and updation takes place but it gets stuck on "finishing sync". I then need to eject the device. If I continue to wait, it times out. Happening every time.

Any ideas?

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Answer 3

Jan 27, 2012 3:07 AM in response to unsliced

This is a huge problem that Apple keeps ignoring and refuses to address the issue. If you look on this forum there are huge threads about this and ridiculous ways to fix it. They seem random to everyone. I have spent the last two months trying to resolve this but no one knows the answer. Every itunes update I hope fixes it but it's just an update to sell stuff on itunes like ebooks and movies.

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Answer 4

Jan 30, 2012 7:16 PM in response to unsliced

I seem to have overcome this problem. Somewhere I read that having a large photo library associated with the iPod can really bog things down, even if not many photos are being sync'd to the device. So, I turned off syncing photos and all is well. I had heard that creating a separate folder of just the pictures you want to sync could also speed up this process, but didn't try that.

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