I have run into the same problem with iTunes 11.2.2.3 on Windows 7, both with iOS 7.1.1 and iOS 7.1.2. I finally found a series of steps that restores everything without rebooting my computer or phone. As near as I can tell, iTunes and its services on Windows loose track of things. So the solution is to:
- Exit iTunes (by closing it properly if you can, killing if you cannot).
- Use TaskMgr to kill iTunesHelper.exe (if there s a polite way to do that, I have not found it)
- Stop the following services (either from Services manager or on a command line prefixed with Net Stop:
- iPod Service
- Bonjour Service
- Apple Mobile Device Service
- On your iPhone, kill the Music app (i.e. dbl click home button, find the music app and swipe up to force it to exit).
Now you just perform the reverse of 1 - 3 and in reverse order:
1. Net Start:
- iPod Service
- Bonjour Service
- Apple Mobile Device Service
2. Start iTunesHelper (on my computer it is found at "C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunesHelper.exe". Generally it is found in the same directory as iTunes,
3. Start iTunes (again, in my case: "C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe".
Order may or may not be important. This order works for me, but I lack any data to say why... except that it does, If you find a better order, I'd love to learn about it.
And then open the music app on your iPhone. This works for me every time and, with the Windows script I wrote it goes pretty quickly. Be sure you stop all the services first and then restart them one after the other. Seems like there is something funky happening when a thread or process (or, I guess, sharing client) goes away or stops performing. By cleanly stopping then restarting the service components and iTunes, it seems to clean up as well as a reboot. This looks like poor handling of process in the thread or process attach/detach methods for these services... though it is quite hard to be sure without debugging the whole thing.
Happy to share the script if there is interest. Please note that it also requires a few script-support console apps I've written. No extras needed to follow the above steps beyond your computer and a working knowledge of the Services Manager screen,
I hope the helps others save from rebooting on Windows (or from searching for hours for a solution). Sorry, but I don't know what the equivalent steps are for OS X (and maybe the 7.1.1 update made all of that moot).
Cheers...
- dennis