Q: AppleMobileDeviceService.exe is hogging up to %50 of CPU

Hi All,

NONE of the reasonable workarounds work permanently.

The only workaround that works is : Uninstall iTunes or atleast most of it's non-essential services.

Now I use iTunes only for store purchases (after uninstalling most of its services).

My solution was to upgrade to a newer version of my Anti-Virus product. The suggested fix of "netsh winsock reset" does usually work, but it unhooks your Anti-Virus from the network interface, which is kinda risky...

I've turned off wifi sync and so far so good.  I think the first time I attempted this, I did not do it correctly, as the setting did not sync.  I'l post back in a week or 2 to update.

Thank you, Anarkii.

Since the problem is intermittent, I'll have to wait before opening the champagne, but this seems a likely bypass, given that Outlook 2007 seems to be slowed to a standstill every time this problem occurs.

I use Google Calendar synch to publish my Outlook calendar to a Gmail account, which provides an effective way of getting it on to the iPad and my Android phone. Since the iTunes synching of contacts doesn't seem to work, there's little lost by disabling all the Outlook synchronization.

It would be interesting to hear if others with this problem have also been synching Outlook with Gmail AND iTunes. That could explain the apparently random onset of the problem -- if iTunes tries to synchronize when Outlook is already being accessed by the Google synch, it perhaps goes into a tight loop waiting for Outlook to become unlocked. But since it's hogging the processor that Outlook needs to complete the Gmail synch, the wait becomes infinite.

Ah well, it seemed a good idea at the time.

For a while after I disabled iPad/Outlook synch in iTunes, AppleMobileDeviceService was fairly well-behaved (1-12%).  But a few hours after I detatched my iPad, it was back at 50%.  So I shut down iTunes -- no effect. Then I shut down Outlook -- no effect, it's running between 47 and 50% cpu on a 2-core processor. 

Once I've completed this post, I'll restart my machine.

But if anyone can suggest a viable alternative to iTunes, I'm in the market.  Apple clearly doesn't care what Windows users have to suffer.

EB,

My solution was to disable the Wifi sync option in iTunes.  Now that I only sync my Apple products via cable, I never have the dreaded CPU hogging problem.

There is no viable alternative to iTunes that I am aware of.  We're locked in...

Here's a solution I posted 9 pages back, too -- it also works if you can't live w/o Wifi synching...

The easiest workaround I can think of is simple, though annoying:

--If you don't have Microsoft's Process Explorer, get it.  If you have Windows, you should have PE.

--Run PE w/ Admin privileges (right click and choose Run as Admin is one way).

--Sort by the Process column and locate AppleMobileDeviceService.exe (not ...Helper.exe).

--Right click and choose Suspend when you're done syncing.

--Close PE.  When you're ready to sync next time (assuming that you haven't rebooted), open PE and choose Resume.  [On my system, the hogging only happens after a sync.]

This problem is really upsetting as my computer is running high CPU all the time because of it. The new iPhone is coming out next week and I am in the market for a new phone. I am not going to buy it though if I have to burn out my computer just to own it. APPLE FIX THIS PROBLEM or my new soon to be phone will not be an iPhone.

I fixed this issue by simply dumping IOS... While I still have my IPad, with OTA/WiFi updates, I have no reason to have ITunes installed on my Windows machine(WiFi Sync never really worked that great anyways)... My machine(Alienware Area51 ALX) would run it's tits off all night while I'm trying to sleep, just because of the AppleMobileDevice Service running on my machine... Kill the AppleMobileDevice service and everything goes back to normal... It's blatenly obvious that Apple designed ITunes to run poorly on Windows as it's very ill-designed... Resource hog <-- especially at boot up...etc... In which, I suppose in hopes, that you would go buy a Mac that would play nicely with your IPhone......

I've been an early adopter since the 1st IPhone, and am now pretty happy to dump them and their eco... For my HTC ONE...

I was skeptical of Android... and yet still am a bit... WindowsPhone just didn't have the App store nor quality apps...

As an IOS user, I couldn't understand the place for Android... But it's making sense now... I'm now considering selling off my IPad 3rd Gen for an Android Tablet to take it's place... To sum it all up....The OP's complaints being a pretty signifigant reason...

I have to agree with your sentiments. For many years I promoted iTunes for windows with an iPod as a great way to manage media. Especially for those who were not tech savy.

Since iTunes 11 came out it has all turned to chaos.  I have restored 3 folks pc back to 10.7 and turned off the update functionality and I no longer recommend their (Apple's) media solutions.

When V10.7 becomes unusable (and assuming V1x.x of iTunes is still a mess) I will be moving everyone to WinAmp on the PC and Poweramp on Android.

Whilst the competition on the PC platform hasn't gotten much better, iTunes has gone down to their level.  There is little difference now between them.

Whilst I have 2 ipods, I am using them less and less.  I love the way I can just connect the Galaxly Note II using any old USB cable and just drag and drop any media to the SD card (which is swap-able too).

On Android PowerAmp, although a paid app, does a great job.  It is a pity as iTunes used to a long way ahead of the back. A self inflicted wound has brought them back to being ordinary.  Sad.

Well, I like to beat Apple up for its shoddy iOS and iTunes beta testing practices as much as the next guy.  Still, to be fair, iTunes 11.x works fine if you turn off WiFi syncing.  And, it's not like the CPU hog process fix I posted above is anything more than a 15 second annoyance every time you sync if you must use WiFi syncing.

iTunes 11.x is far from a disaster?  It actually works pretty well.

I have found a solution to this on Windows xp.

Step 1

First go to control panel in the start menu.

Step 2

Go to administrator tools then through that go on Services.

A Services Window should pop up with lists of Services.

Step 3

Click "Stop" the service.

only solution for the task manager proccess.

That will sort the processor hogging, as that is the process that hogs it, but will prevent itunes from connecting to the device!

Exactly right, GoochyB.

Xabe, scroll up a bit -- I posted a better solution.  But, the best solution is to just turn off WiFi syncing and never worry about this again.