iPhone Syncing Problem

Yeah I checked it too by disabling it while I was troubleshooting, with no luck. But been on the phone to Apple for an hour this morning trying to work it out. The were stumped but suggested uninstalling NIS. I did so and restarted and the problem remained, but then I deleted my lockdown and backups and tried again. Been through dozens of syncs and backups so far without the error occurring.

That's not to say its definitely fixed the problem because I sometimes managed to get it working for a while like this. I won't know for a couple of days whether its worked or not. In the meantime I have to run without security software - really not a good idea!

I did note that there is a new version of NIS available for me to download - but I hadn't had a chance to install it. May be worth a shot.

So, after uninstalling NIS and running without it for a few hours, I had no issues backing up to iTunes.

Tried reinstalling NIS and immediately the problem reoccurred. As soon as I removed it again, the error disappeared.

I'm going to try raising the issue with Apple again, and also report it to Symantec in the hope that one of them can figure out what's going on.

Ii too am getting sync issue error messages on a 64 bit Win 7 platform, most of the time the syncs do actually take place despite the Windows warning. The problem started as soon as I updated iTunes to 10.7, subsequently updating my iPhone 4 to iOS6 hasn't resolved this ( curiously my iPad seems ok so far ! ). I have tried all the suggestions in this thread without success so can do nothing more than monitor the thread in the hope that someone finds a solution or Apple issue a patch.

Hey ColdFusion,

Very helpful - thank you for calling Apple and keeping us updated. If you make it through a whole day now without any problems backing up or synching, then you've isolated the problem! If it is a problem with NIS, Symantec will probably be quicker at dealing with it than Apple will. (Not that Symantec has great customer service - it's just that Apple is really useless at addressing these things.)

Thanks again!

Hey! I disabled Norton Internet Security's firewall and everything worked perfectly!!! I did two synchs with no problem at all - no error messages. So that IS the problem. (ColdFusion - I went to Norton's community site to see if anyone else mentioned the problem and I got excited when I saw one comment about it...but it was from you! LOL).

Anyway, clearly there is an incompatibility between the NIS firewall and iTunes 10.7 and that is causing a problem for us.

Perhaps if everyone here contacts Symantec, they'll move their butts and fix it. (We know Apple isn't going to move that quickly.)

Thanks, ColdFusion, for coming up with the cure! : )

Thanks for finding a possible solution. I have had this problem for almost 2 weeks. It started with iTunes 10.6 and both my iPhone and another iPod Touch would not back up or update with showing errors. I currently run Win 7 (32 bit), iTunes 10.7, IOS 6 (both devices), & NIS 2012. I tried temprorarily disabling Norton Smart Firewall and synced both units without a problem. I also manually backed up both devices. One was through WIFI and the other was directly connected! Looks like the problem lies with Norton.

Thanks again, ColdFusionH3, for the discovery. 🙂

NIS current version provided by Comcast.

I tried this as well and it didn't work for me. Still recieved the "session" error. Thanks though. Seems my "session" problem is intermintent though.

I still get the sync problems and don't use NIS , so not exclusively a Norton problem ( I use ESET )..any other ideas folks ?

I thought this was solved with 10.7.0.21 yesterday, but got the "unable to sync information" error this morning. I disabled the firewall (I use McAfee), resynced and all went well. I've thought this was fixed before, though, so I'm only cautiously optomistic that this is a reliable workaround....

I think what we'll most likely find is that Apple tried to make iTunes do something it's not supposed to do and is conflicting with firewalls - especially since it's now becoming apparently other firewalls are causing issues too.

Hopefully they'll come up with a fix in the near future. For the time being, those of you with issues that can be solved by temporarily disabling the firewalls have at least a temporary solution. For those like me who don't have any success by disabling the firewall, iCloud is the only option for backing up my devices for the time being.

Although I've tried disabling the firewall completely, I haven't tried excluding some Apple bits and pieces on their own. Might give that a shot and see if I have any luck.

Some programs that come to mind are stored in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\. All of the support programs seem to be stored there (mobile backup, sync etc). Might be a good place to start.

One thing I should have mentioned I tried was resetting the NIS firewall (Settings > Network > Smart Firewall > Advanced Settings > Firewall Reset) - may be different depending on your version.

At the minute my devices are backing up - but I had an error earlier on so clearly not a complete solution. Might be worth a shot though.

I also tried the Firewall Reset. Worked for the backup and the sync. Disabling the firewall earlier failed to work like it did earlier. The "session" & "connection" errors returned when syncing and backing up. I am still backing up to iCloud until all of this is resolved. I also now agree that it is more of an iTunes problem than a security problem based on the other contributors that use McAfee & NOD32.

Well, my cautious optomism was unfounded! Sync with firewall off failed for information section, same error message. Intermittent problems are ALWAYS the most bedevling!

OK, it's now the third day of my trying to synch with NIS firewall on and with NIS firewall disabled. I've done it about 10 times per day. In all, the sync worked perfectly every time except for one when I had NIS disabled. And the sync always give me an error message every time when NIS firewall is functional. I have no idea what caused the one time of getting the error message when NIS firewall was disabled. But 99% of the time, it's worked when the Firewall was disabled.

If you're also using NIS, try re-booting your PC and then after it re-starts, disable the firewall and try the sync again. See if it makes any difference.

Note: Make sure you're disabling the NIS Firewall and not the NIS anti-virus (which has no bearing on this issue).

(By the way, even though I get the error message while the firewall is on, it still actually syncs because I have it on WiFi, too. But for people who don't have WiFi, this has got to be a major problem.)