You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Judyant Author

Level 1

4 points

USB tethering lost after downloading I-tunes 10.7

I lost all tethering (USB and Bluetooth) after I downloaded I-Tunes 10.7 on Sunday. I live in the country so personal hotspot is the ONLY way I can access the Internet. Network manager lists iPhone, but says the computer can't connect to the phone by Bluetooth or USB.

What I have already tried:

I used Time Capsule to restore to before the download (didn't help). I found a solution on this board for Lion (i have Snow Leopard) but I tried it anyway. I deleted the file AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext, re-installed I-tunes from the installer, restarted but it didn't help. Next i connected both iPhones to a friends mac - personal hotspot worked fine, so I know it is my mac.

I have never used " terminal", so if your solution needs it, please write simply because I don't know what I am doing! Lol.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), I-phone 3 Gs Personal hotspot

Posted on Sep 18, 2012 11:10 PM

36 replies

Sep 27, 2012 9:09 AM in response to BryanWM

I cannot understand why you have to reinstall iTunes and I'm quite afraid of doing that (I don't want to loose anything in iTunes as it is now). Is this my fear wrong? Should I reinstall iTunes at all costs?

Judyant Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 27, 2012 9:44 AM in response to Paperinik77

If you are uncomfortable, try replacing the bad kext file with a good one without reinstalling I-Tunes. It shouldn't be a problem either way because your purchases etc are stored in your I-Tunes store account. Any music you added manually you must have CDs for, right?

Sep 28, 2012 6:23 PM in response to Judyant

How might one resolve this issue if we don't have backups through Time Machine? Is it a case of waiting on the next iTunes update?

Judyant Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 28, 2012 6:43 PM in response to laurencebrown1981

Hello Laurence,

Living in the country, I had no other way to get online than tethering to my I-phone. Luckily i was able to revert to an older version. If you have another method (DSL or cable etc) you may be able to download the file from somewhere (I don't know where). I sure wish someone could persuade Apple to admit the problem and offer the download on their website. I am very loyal to Apple products, but this is ridiculous!

I would be happy to email the file to you, if that would help. If that wont work, I don't know how to help. Sorry.

Sep 30, 2012 1:02 PM in response to Judyant

hi judyant
i am facing the same problem, can you please send me your email id ??

Oct 2, 2012 12:40 PM in response to Judyant

Here you will find my solution and the links to the working kext and another app used to correctly install it

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4386838

Gothero

Level 1

0 points

Oct 4, 2012 9:04 AM in response to Judyant

Thanks !!!

Oct 9, 2012 10:04 AM in response to Judyant

Another case of bad quality control on the part of Apple...

Luckily I have several Macs, and tend to update only one at a time, an wait to see what they have messed up this time, they manage make quite a few headaches with EVERY update, despite what the appologists would have you believe.

Anyway, having compared two machines, (one updated the other not) the update of iTunes to 10.7 seems to have updated AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext to version 2.3.6 and in the process messed it up (of course, its not their fault).

You need to replace this kext with a good version or an earlier working version, repairing permissions did not work.

To do this, download KextUtility and install it, then drag the old working kext onto the KextUtility icon, it willreplace the broken version and fix any other permission issues in your S/L/E folder.

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Kext-Utility.shtml

and the working kexts (if you can't find it on your time machine backup)...

Version 2.2.0 (Working on 10.6.8) http://db.tt/Fahk9VBe

Version 2.3.6 (Working on 10.8 & 10.7) http://db.tt/U674UcOV

Nice one Apple, thanks for wasting a few hours of my life, AGAIN.

Oct 9, 2012 11:35 AM in response to Hibernian56

Try this link for KextUtility...

http://cvad-mac.narod2.ru/Kext_Utility

Oct 31, 2012 11:43 AM in response to Hibernian56

Thanks. Worked like a charm.

Nov 10, 2012 2:38 AM in response to Hibernian56

Thank you - it may have cost you an hour - but your post saved me many hours, and I'm sure many other people too. Thank you

Nov 11, 2012 9:20 AM in response to Hibernian56

Yes! Thanks so much for the fix. Both USB and Bluetooth tethering now work with my iPhone 3gs!

Nov 13, 2012 9:28 PM in response to Judyant

Went to the Genius Bar with this problem. It had them stumped, but their fix of booting into the Resport Partition (Command R on startup) and reinstalling the OS worked. IMHO this is better than hacking Kernal Extensions as was recommended in comments.

Nov 14, 2012 2:23 PM in response to DJtrustGod

I don't think using the Kext Utility is actually hacking. The point is, it worked. FYI, my certified Apple tech was stumped, too, and couldn't fix the issue, even after doing a clean install of Snow Leopard and then dragging the older extension file directly into the appropriate folder.

Nov 14, 2012 4:33 PM in response to The DrumRunner

I hear you DrumRunner, I've used the KEXT utility as well. But my point is this is a symptom of some fundemental system extensions that are out of wack. Booting to the restore partition and reinstalling the OS is easy and may clean up other things we don't see (yet). After I resintalled and re-ran updates, my system is much faster as well as fixing the tethering issue. I was surprised that it was so easy, all my settings, accounts, and apps were not affected.

USB tethering lost after downloading I-tunes 10.7