Waiting for sync to start

I was having trouble as well. It would say "waiting to sync" and not go beyond that point. To fix it..

I shut my phone off.

Plugged the USB to my computer.

Clicked "restore phone".

Turned phone on.

Then tried syncing again. It worked!

just restart your phone .

if it didnt work , im sorry but you must restore your iphones

I've been trying to solve this issue with 3 of my devices. Its infuriating. After wiping my phone to defaults, everyhting is fine until I restore. It appears to be some kind of data corruption issue, but I have no idea how to fix it at this point. There isn't any useful error in the phone console that might give hints.

The only suggestion I have for you at this point would be to wipe and start over without restoring

I know it's not a cosolation, but I am having the same problem with my ipad1. It refuses to sync or update. In my case, I think itunes match is the culprit. It seems once you turn on itunes match on an IOS device you can no longer manually add files. If if you turn it off on your IOS device, the library gets hosed so that it won't sync properly in itunes. My only solution is to restore and never ever turn on itunes match on my ios devices.

Very frustrating. Restoring is 3-4 hours.

Same here - has to be the iTunes Match. Ipad1 synced perfectly until iTunes Match started its l-o-n-g march to completion. Still going after an entire weekend. Now, the pad just times out with the "Waitiing for sync to start...".

I had origninally turned on Match on the iPad1 then switched it off when it never listed any of the playlists. Now, the waiting....It times out everytime.

I hate Match. Wish I had never done this. Why can't I just undo this terrible mistake of a feature? There is no way to turn this off?

I haven't activated Match, but I had run into the same "waiting for sync to start" message that eventually timed out.

I cured my problem by running the same iTunes64Setup.exe that I used to upgrade to 10.6.1.7. The options were Repair and Uninstall. I chose Repair, then rebooted Windows as recommended. Now the sync works, to an iPad 2, to a 1st-gen iPod nano, and a 2nd-gen iPod Shuffle.

just http://www.apple.com/itunes/download

the Download button points to

https://swdlp.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SoftwareDownloadApp.woa/wa/getProduct Data?localang=en_us&grp_code=itunes&returnURL=http://www.apple.com/itunes/downlo ad&isMiniiFrameReq=N

One day my iTunes also gave the same error after "waiting for sync to start". It gives this error for all 3 iPhones in use in my house and my iPad. Luckily this started happening after iOS 5 so syncing isn't as useful. It is very annoying not being able to listen to audiobooks (you have to sync to get them on the phone) on my new 4S. I have also tried restoring one phone and restarting all of them, none of these solutions worked. I have also reinstalled itunes (but I cannot rebuild my iTunes database, i have a lot of hand keyed in data). I hope someone finds a solution to this.

This is a horrendous bug. I haven't been able to sync for weeks. Tried everything that's been suggested. Once, after agonizingly restoring my iPhone, it synced. Once. Then, after that one sync, back to "waiting for sync to start." Ugh.

And now I just come to find out that my wife's iPhone hasn't synced in weeks either. This is utter garbage.

Is this related to iTunes Match? Becuase I have it, too, and there seems to be some correlation.