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USB tethering lost after installing iphone configuration utility

For the longest time I've been surfing on my Mac (on Lion) tethered to my iPhone (on iOS5). The "iPhone USB" service appears normal in the Network section of System Preferences. After I installed iPhone Configuration Utility (v3.4) the "iPhone USB" service just displays a red dot and I get a "Either the iPhone USB cable..." message.


I found a tip saying I can reboot my Mac holding down the "3" and "2" keys to run in 32-bit mode and this re-enabled the "iPhone USB" service. But this means I have to run 32-bit every time I need to tether?!? I tried uninstalling iPhone Config Utility but the problem persisted.


Is there something I'm missing?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Feb 10, 2012 3:36 AM

Reply
85 replies

Mar 14, 2012 5:49 PM in response to Luis Santos

+1 Same Issue here. Tried reintsalling iTunes, Multiple reboots of Iphone and Macbook. The feature is simply not working. Bluetooth and Wifi Tethering are working fine.

Mar 16, 2012 7:10 AM in response to zahidmaqbool

Tried uninstalling iPhone Config 3.5. No luck. Tried installing iphone config 3.2 from a time machine backup file. No luck. Seems we are out of luck until Apple releases a new fix in Iphone config or iTunes. My guess is Network drivers for Iphone got broken

Mar 19, 2012 11:51 PM in response to Community User

Having a simlar issue on both my iphone 3Gs and 4s since update to 5.1 iOS. MBP lion 10.7.3


I just tried to update the iPhone Configuration Utility V3.5 (289) but seems it the same as what I had before despite apple site having a date 16 Mar 2012


I get BT PH ok and wifi is visible and connects but no USB is listed in the netwrork selections nor can it be added it seems.


Will try on a machine without iPhone Configuration Utility and see if that works, or maybe an old boot drive on my MBP

Mar 22, 2012 7:05 AM in response to Luis Santos

Same issue here. iPhone with iOS5.1, another with an earlier iOS, USB tether works fine with Windows 7+iTunes, and with Ubuntu Linux, so the phone + cable combination is OK. The USB tether is broken in the 64 bit mode, but works fine in 32 bit.


Phone and USB tethering works fine on a different Macbook (Air, with the same version of Lion and iTunes)


It seems I will need to wait for Apple to release a patch to repair the damage that the iPhone Configuration Utility appears to cause to MacOSX Lion.


(I have an Apple support case 300626181 which ran through quite detailed testing of a number of combinations, but ultimately failed to resolve the issue)

Mar 25, 2012 7:26 AM in response to jypsilantis

I've solved removing iPhone Configuration Utility 3.5 (simply trash them), removing also:



sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.iPhoneConfigurationUtility.*

rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoneConfigurationUtility.plist*



After a reboot for safe to unload somthing related to iphone conf utility and I've restored this copying from another mac with same OS but no iPhone conf utility installed:



/System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleUSBEthe rnetHost



Now USB tethering works. :-)

Mar 25, 2012 3:00 PM in response to zwizardofoz

In my case, after removing iphone conf utility I've seen that the AppleUSBEthernetHost file was smaller than the same file on the other host.


This is the bad file:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 52120 2 Feb 20:30 AppleUSBEthernetHost


And this the file on the other host:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 180760 23 Gen 07:23 AppleUSBEthernetHost


As you can see, the size is different, four times bigger.

USB tethering lost after installing iphone configuration utility

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