iTunes music will not sync to iPhone 4s anymore

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iTunes music will not sync to iPhone 4s anymore

Problem: I can no longer get music to sync from iTunes to my iPhone 4s.

Equipment: iPhone 4s (64gb) with update to OS 5.0.1. iTunes 10.5.0.142 on Windows.

Background: iPhone music froze on a podcast earlier today. I rebooted iPhone by Pressing sleep/wake button plus Home button.

After the reboot, all music (including podcasts and audiobooks) are missing from my iPhone; everything else (including photos and apps) is unaffected. I have no video to worry about.

Before this morning, everything was working fine. I updated to OS 5.0.1 a day or two ago.

What I've tried:

- Connecting by USB and syncing. Various combinations on Summary page, Music page, & Podcast page of Sync entire library, Sync selected playlists (which is what I normally use), Sync selected podcasts.

- 'Trick' reported online of choosing a song listed under the Device, playing it in iTunes, and then syncing.

- Ran all iTunes diagnostics on syncing; no problems.

- Restore iPhone from within Summary page. This redownloaded 5.0.1 all the way, but in the processing stage at the end produced an error. However, iTunes says my iPhone's software is fully up to date.

In my Music tab, what I see is:

- Check box by 'Sync Music'

- Choose 'Selected playlists' radio button; correctly shows 1500+ songs.

- Choose some playlists and/or albums --> blue audio bar at bottom will rise promisingly

- Hit Sync, and then Apply . . . or alternatively Apply, and then Sync

Result:

- Goes through Syncing . . .but at end, blue audio bar disappears, and there's no music on the iPhone.

My music is all safely there in iTunes. I am suspecting the iPhone has some sort of problem in recognizing the Music library, but I don't know how to fix it. With the iPhone connected to iTunes, what shows up under the Device on the left side is a correct picture of my library, but greyed out. If I click on a song there, a little exclamation point pops up.

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1, iTunes 10.5.0.142

Posted on Nov 13, 2011 3:22 PM

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Answer 1

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halobender

Level 1

5 points

Nov 15, 2011 4:13 PM in response to DSOVirginia

This issue started for me immeditately after my upgrade to 5.0.1 with iPhone 4s. I am syncing via Mac with iTunes. I just now updated to iTunes 10.5.1 and it did not resolve the issue.

For me it ended up being a Library issue. Due to space constraints I had deleted a lot of files off of my Mac so they are no longer found by the library (exclamation point in iTunes). It wasn't until 5.0.1 that these songs were removed from my phone.

Right-click on a song in iTunes and select Get Info. At the bottom of the Summary tab the file path will be listed next to "where". Are you able to find the file in the location shown?

Jill

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Answer 2

DSOVirginia Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 16, 2011 4:32 AM in response to halobender

Thanks for your reply, Jill. I should have come on yesterday morning to say that I called Apple and (after some messing around) they were able to come up with a solution:

The basic problem was that my applications weren't fully closing down. Somehow that was keeping the sync from working, and also was likely why doing a Restore of the iPhone from within iTunes kept giving a failure message at the very end of the process.

The solution:

- Doubleclick Home button on phone

- If there are icons there in a strip at the bottom of the phone for some of your apps, press and hold one until they all start wiggling

- Close each of the apps by hitting the red 'minus' sign on its icon

After that, when I connected to iTunes, I was able to sync music.

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