Device is unreachable: Cannot import video from iPhone 5 to Win 8.1 PC

Hello dalpay

Check out the article below to troubleshoot the issue. You may want to try importing the videos in another user or a different computer.

iOS: Unable to import photos to computer

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3195

Regards,

-Norm G.

I have the same problem as Dalpay, but it does not seem to be limited to large videos. Any video on my iPhone 5 will not import into windows 8 using the built in Windows 8 import photos. All other photos do. The article above only addresses issues when computer cannot connect at all, then recommends using another computer. Not helpful.

All that changed for me was iPhone 4s to iPhone 5s, then *.mov would not import. Any other clues? Seems like the new features in video on the 5 are rejected by windows somehow. Windows gives the error "The device is unreachable." when I try to copy the file.

I think I got it figured out!! (I was wrong about 4s vs 5s. Maybe it was iOS 6 vs iOS 7)

I went to Settings > Photos & Camera and enabled "Photo Sharing". That allowed the PC to download the videos. Strange behavior.

the Photo Sharing you mentioned, is that the iCloud Photo Sharing?

I noticed that 66mb video will copy to PC (even with some photos). 79mb video will cause it to say device unreachable. I will then have to unplug/plug my USB and transfer that file by itself😕

I'm getting the same problem! Worst is mine limits me to 30mb and I keep having to transfer files one at a time and reconnecting the phone to computer! How can I fix this problem? I'm manually dragging and dropping files ONE AT A TIME. (BTW I'm referring to PC computer) Pls help! as I got toooooo much videos and cant afford to be doing this for each and every file!

I had the same issue. Here is what I did and it works fine.

My iPhone is 5S with iOS 8.1.

On my iPhone, I went to "Settings" --> "Photos & Camera" and I then turned on both "My Photo Stream" & "iCloud Photo Sharing" (you may need to turn on only one feature and it may work...I did not try to turn one on at a time because I was so frustrated and I did not have patience...so I turned them all on). I then unplugged my iPhone and then plugged it back in...the Windows 8 window popped up and I transferred all videos at once. I then also could be able to use Windows Explorer to copy & paste the video files if I wanted to (I could not do this before I fixed it).

Good luck guys

Hi All

I was getting really frustrated like you guys but Windows itself seems to have provided a possible solution. My iPhone 5S was not being recognised as an external drive by my Windows 8.1 PC. I went to "Control Panel/Devices and Printers" and the iPhone came up as "Apple Mobile Device USB Driver" instead of "Apple iPhone". When I right-clicked on it and selected "Troubleshoot" it said, "Apple Mobile Device USB driver is an older device and might not work with USB 3.0, Plug the device into an available USB 2.0 port"

I gave it a go and so far it seems to have worked!

Good luck!

This worked for me and my iPhone 6 Plus and Windows 8.1.

You're forced to use the USB 2.0 speeds on large files. From what I can tell it's because Apple hasn't bothered to update their USB 3.0 drivers.

This is yet another issue that I've developed with yet another Apple product that I own... Looks like Mr. Cook doesn't quite have the same eye for detail that Mr. Jobs had for quality assurance.

I had same issue with .mov only. I found that I could copy the files to my desktop then move to the network drive (NAS). So my issue was probably related to IPhone to PC to NAS drive.

I am having a similar problem to the one described in here, but none of the posted solutions have worked for me. The problem is the same as what is decribed above. When importing photos and videos from my iPhone 5S which is running iOS 8.4.1 to my laptop which was using Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and now Windows 10, I get an error message saying that there was an error when importing a video file. It only happens on video files. It can occur with Windows Photo Manager or Adobe Photoshop. When this occurs, the program importing the files acts as if the iPhone was unplugged from the computer.

I have tried the following:

- Switching between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. (no change)

- Turning iCloud Photo Sharing and Photo Stream on and off in all possible combinations (no change)

- Booting the computer up with the iPhone plugged in (no change and I don't even know why I thought that would work).

- Using a computer with Windows 7 (Works!!)

Something interesting that I noticed: When I upload the pictures from my phone to my PC, it will "disconnect" at some videos, and I do believe that the length of the video plays a role in that as mentioned above. However, the PC acts as if it lost the file during the upload. So when I look in my Photos/Videos folder, the video is present, but the time stamp has changed. The time that the video was shot has decreased by about a day. I don't know if that helps anyone, but any advice would be greatly appreciated. As others have stated, it's very frustrating to keep unplugging and plugging back in your phone for every video!

🙂 Its true!!! thank you!!!!

Ugh! I have tried all of these things. I just upgraded my phone from 5 to 6s and now I cannot download my photos to my computer. I've tried everything I can think of including making sure that iTunes on my computer is set to share with my network, nothing seems to be working for me. 😟

Thank you! Switching to a different USB port (presumably switching from a USB 3.0 port to a USB 2.0 port) seemed to help. It was still quirky (it took a couple of tries), but it was much better.

FYI: I'm using Windows 10