The iPhone "..." could not be synced because the sync session failed to start

removed everything, reinstalled itunes as you suggested. still stuck in waiting for sync to start.

however whilst iPad is shown correctly under my Computer (the iPad icon) and syncs fine, my iPhone is shown as the picture below.

System Manager shows the iPhone (as well as the iPad) under portable devices with drivers as below

Uninstalling and/or updating the driver to Apple Mobile Device Driver fails as the 2006 drivers (as Microsoft says are the best) Pic below

Any help will be appreciated.

I've had this issue multiple times with the new iPad. All I had to do was hit the eject button in iTunes. Worked every time after i plugged it back in.

hope this helps

that didn't work either. same error message.

Same problem. Nothing fixes this for me.

up-to-date lion

up-to-date ios 5

lousy.

Typical nonsense solution:

My phone does show in iTunes but nothing I tried would get me past Sync failed to start. I went to Phots & swit it to a folder with 1 Pic in it. Then I went to Music & switched from Entire Music Library to Selected Playlists Artists, Albums ...

THen I selected every Artist in the list & hit Apply. Next thing I know it's step 5 of 7 & the Song Names are flying by.

Works, makes no sense but it works. That's all I care about. I only wanted to listen to the music not understand the inner workings of some programmers mind.

LAter.

I was syncing iphone with itunes on my lap top and I got at the end of the sync a pop window "itunes could not backup iphone cuz backup session failed" so I disconnected and reconnected and it backed up and synced fine. I also restarted and tried again and it backed up and synced fine.

The thing is with the ios 5 it doesn't create a new backup every time. It overwrites the older backup. So my questions are:

Could the reason be that maybe it couldn't access the existing backup to overwrite it?

Since it worked fine when i tried again, could just have been a one time communication error between phone and computer? Or do I need to diagnose deeper into the matter?

Just wanna make sure it's fine, nothing permanent sine I panic very much from the pv and the iPhone not communicating properly.

I'm using iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1.1 not jail broken and my lap top is running windows vista and the latest iTunes.

Any help is really appreciated

Thank you so much for posting the solution! It was driving me crazy that the backup session could not be completed...what I did was follow SodInfinity's instructions but I clicked on Repair in the Apple Mobile Device Support option list...it has now backed up my iPhone 3GS so now I can update to iOS6!! Thanks again!! 😀

Here is the post from SodInfinity:

Just made one very simple move without having to restore iPhone or reinstall iTunes.. 🙂

1st step:http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1538 *Read 'in my case' in here first before following this link*
Follow that link to restart (or if necessary) reinstall your Apple mobile device support.

In my case, Leave iPhone connected all the way. I first exit iTunes. Then i stopped the Apple Mobile device support (by following a part on that link above in step 1) which Effectively made my iPhone undetectable on itunes but discoverable by windows as a 'camera device'. Then while device is still connected, i started the Apple mobile dev support again. Now i open itunes and there my iPhone re-appears.

2nd step: After your iphone re-appears on iTunes, press Sync and all is well... 😉

P.S, Mine is iPhone 4 running on iOS 5, iTunes 10.5, Windows 7..

Any guidance or direction to comment threads for folks who are in what you call category #1? ("Intermittent failures that are typically solved by restarting,etc.")

Thanks so much for your tip. I just had this with the current IOS for the first time. This tip still works great.

If you syncronize two or more Apple devices with the same PC Outlook data, try the following solution that so far is working for me:

Make sure that all your Apple devices are set up to automatically back up to the same location, either to “iCloud” or to “This computer.” Can’t mix backup locations; i.e., can’t have one device backing up to “iCloud” while the other is backing up to “This computer.”

To verify or change each device’s backup location, open iTunes, connect the device to the PC via USB cable, select Summary, Backups, Automatically Back Up, and select either “iCloud” or “This computer,” making sure that you select the same option for all the Apple devices that get synchronized with that PC’s Outlook data.

Good luck!

i had this problem with a brand new iphone 4s, i simply rebooted my iphone and then the error was gone.

used ios 7 and itunes 11.1.2

Dijonvo wrote:

i had this problem with a brand new iphone 4s, i simply rebooted my iphone and then the error was gone.

used ios 7 and itunes 11.1.2

Works for me

Same iTunes version and IOS

Rebooting my iPad also worked for me. I had tried the other suggestions of rebooting my Mac, restarting iTunes, deselecting certain synhcing options, ejecting the iPad, re-signing in to iTunes store, etc. and none of them worked. Simply powering down the iPad completely and then starting it back up did the trick.

Thanks.

Had the same problem.

I restarted my computer and turned off and on my 4s, then i could syn successfully.🙂

I had the same problem. In my case the cause was an mp3 file which has chinese characters in filename. i noticed that on music library and removed it. Then the sync process completed successfully.