Why won't my iphone 4 show up in itunes

Question

Level 1

71 points

Why won't my iphone 4 show up in itunes

I have an iPhone 4 running IOS 4.3.5 and a Macbook Pro running 10.7.1 and iTunes 10.4.1 (b10).

For some reason, in the last few days, my iPhone won't show up in iTunes any more. I generally have a LOT of devices plugged in, but I've tried running with only the iPhone and the external drive with my iTunes library plugged in.

I've tried multiple iPhone cables, tried rebooting the machine.

I've tried adding the Applications --> iTunes --> Show Package Contents --> Contents --> MacOS --> iTunesHelper to my Login Items

iTunes still detects my AppleTV in Devices, but the iPhone won't show up.

When I plug in the phone it goes to charging mode, so I know that a connection is being made.

Any suggestions, tips, or links I can pursue to try to be able to resync my phone?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Sep 21, 2011 7:06 PM

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Answer 1

parkerpress Author

Level 1

71 points

Sep 21, 2011 7:44 PM in response to parkerpress

It also appears that iPhoto and ImageCapture can't see the phone either. I'm thinking a Hardware level reset on the phone might be needed.

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Answer 2

parkerpress Author

Level 1

71 points

Sep 21, 2011 8:17 PM in response to parkerpress

A few more notes:

1) Safe boot didn't help

2) Repairing permissions didn't help

3) In iTunes --> Permissions --> Devices, there's nothing listed. None of my old backups show up (although they're apparently still in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup)

Because of #3, I'm a little leary of trying the hardware level reset on the iPhone

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Answer 3

parkerpress Author

Level 1

71 points

Sep 23, 2011 3:28 PM in response to parkerpress

It turns out that I had to reinstall iTunes from scratch. I got the tip from

iTunes: How to remove and reinstall the Apple Mobile Device Service on Mac OS X 10.6.8 or Earlier

I'm 95% sure it had to do with me installing Xcode 4 to get the "FileMerge" utility for some other development effort totally unrelated to Xcode.

Regardless, it's working again.

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