Why does iTunes think my iPad is a new one?

Truthfully do you have to syn it and try taking it out and plugging it back in and then at the bottom of your screen it will say your device click on that and it will say do you want to allow "blank" device to make changes to your computer click yes!

Then your computer will reconize the apple device !

If this doesn't work comment back...

Yes, I'm encountering the exact same problem on Vista too. Really at a lost...will lose a deal of data as my last backup was weeks ago.

This occurred after I updated the iTunes software. Does anyone know how to overcome this?

I am using vista and there is a trick to getting your ipad back to working order. When the prompt to restore ipad from the back up of<insert name here>comes up chose to restore and as soon as the box with the progress of the restore pops up unplug your ipad. Now wait for the box to dissapear and plug in your ipad again. Hope I helped.

boboriginal wrote:

I am using vista and there is a trick to getting your ipad back to working order. When the prompt to restore ipad from the back up of<insert name here>comes up chose to restore and as soon as the box with the progress of the restore pops up unplug your ipad. Now wait for the box to dissapear and plug in your ipad again. Hope I helped.

You're a lifesaver, mate!

It worked - I'm on Windows 7 with iTunes 10.4. The key is to wait till the message "Estimating time..." pops up and then unplugging. Works like a charm.

Much appreciated.

Cheers!

I'm having same problem! I tried the trick of unplugging right after the sync begins and the only thing my iPad does is give me a sync failure message and restarts itself. I plug ipad back in and get same message??? I've emailed iTunes support and they have not been able to help. I tried all the standard stuff like de-authorizing/athorizing, checked that my iPad iOS is the latest version (which it is), latest version of iTunes installed (even uninstalled/reinstalled iTunes). No matter what I try cannot get around this message. I too have tons of app settings/configurations that get lost if I go thru the restore option. I actually tried the restore option out of frustration, lost all of my configurations AND still get the same message - seems like my iPad is caught up in a loop no matter what I try. To make matters worse, my iTunes library got lost as all my songs are showing up with an '!' next to each song (meaning it cannot locate the file). I checked and they are truely missing so when I go to my purchased music all of my purchases show up (all 4000+ of them) however are all listed as 'Downloaded' in the right margin??? My true objective here is to be able to transfer my purchases on my iPad to my iTunes as my iPad is complete as far as all apps/recent purchases. HELP !!! Thanks

Hi Lawrence,

I too have the exact same problem, maybe there is another way to backup our iPads ie third party software. I just do not want my iPad to change at all from its current state.

Is there a possible change to the xml files we can make or anything to get it back in working order.

Thanks in advance.

Mat

Nice one mate, that worked brilliantly! Thank God for that. To be fair, Apple shouldnt let things like this happen! So much time and money spent with my ipad, the last thing i want is to lose everything. I found that it all went wrong when i tried to wirelessley sync it. Never had this issue before from wired syncing. Thanks so much buddy!!!!

I am having this exact same problem with my iPad 2 using windows vista, have you figured out a way to fix it?

Thanks for the tip, it did work!

cheers