Android File Transfer not working on Mavericks, works on Mountain Lion

Question

n8ouz Author

Level 1

10 points

Android File Transfer not working on Mavericks, works on Mountain Lion

Migrating from an iPhone 4 to Samsung Galaxy S5.

I have three workstations:

Mac Mini 2010 Mountain Lion (AFT works on this)

MacBook Pro 15" Snow Leopard (AFT works on this)

MacBook Air 13" Mavericks (AFT does not work)

When I plug the phone into the MacBook Air running Mavericks, AFT starts to load, then says it's unable to communicate with the device.

All three devices NEVER had Samsung Kies on them.

As a fix, I tried installing Kies on the Air running Mavericks - Kies actually works fine with the phone, so I know that the thing "sees" it.

It just appears that AFT is not "compatible" with Mavericks.

Can anyone corroborate this? I have several other reasons stopping me from upgrading my other two systems to Mavericks - slow performance and mail.app being almost unusably slow to be the top two. If AFT no longer works on Mavericks, I may reformat my Air and reinstall Mountain Lion and just skip Mavericks altogether.

Thanks

joe

Posted on Apr 28, 2014 2:15 PM

Reply

Answer 1

st3v1e

Level 1

77 points

May 1, 2014 5:28 PM in response to n8ouz

Hi Joe,

Did your 10.8 OS's connect to the S5 using AFT? Mine tries to open but then gives me a window showing the "Not compatible" message.

I've had the phone a week now and apart from doing the SmartSync, or using Kies (not a great app for organising all your files, only the music IMHO), I've given up trying.

If I can' find a solution, I'm going to remove the SD card, use the adapter to insert to my MBP, drop all my music, Audiobooks, Photo's etc onto that, and then re-insert. This is the only way I can think of to keep all my non business stuff in order in their own folders withoout a lot of jiggling around on the phone itself.

So for me . . . . it's not a just a Mavericks problem.

Any others out there having similar issues with Mavericks, AFT, Kies, organising files etc?

Reply

Answer 2

n8ouz Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 9, 2014 10:24 AM in response to n8ouz

Hi, I figured it out.

It's a TERRIBLE driver from Verizon.

When you plug in the phone, it first attaches as an "installer" and presents an ISO960 (cdrom) image to the OS.

WARNING: DO NOT EVER, EVER FREAKING E V A R RUN THE garbage ON THAT VOLUME.

If you wait, it will go away and the device will mount under AFT just fine, and present your files.

If you're in a hurry, you can go to the S5 screen, under the alerts click on the USB thing, and check the "MTP device" box, which puts the phone immediately into media transfer mode.

Wait.. what? you installed that thing called "Kies?" Or you (like me) accidentally forgot that Verizon ***** for drivers, and ran the installer instead of just waiting for MTP with AFT to kick in? Here's your fix:

I found out (after installing Kies on the computer that stopped working) that Kies uses a driver called "ssuddrv.kext" when its installer runs.

It lives in /System/Library/Extensions/ssuddrv.kext

launch terminal and execute:

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/ssuddrv.kext

really, just blow that sucker away. At first, I just moved it and rebooted to see if anything else would break. It's been about a week, and nothing has broken, and AFT + MTP on the Galaxy S5 is working just fine again.

On both machines.

The Verizon installer and Kies both install that dysfunctional ssuddrv.kext driver. Just delete it. Then reboot, then connect your phone and you're back to the point at which you can either wait for the device to go into MTP mode or you can manually check the box. Myself, I'm lazy, so I wait.

Wish I could find a way to stop the phone from presenting an installer to the OS that doesn't work.

Way to be awesome, Verizon. Worse than bloatware: bloatware that doesn't work.

-jre

Reply

Answer 3

Ilajn

Level 1

0 points

Oct 5, 2014 12:55 PM in response to n8ouz

Perfect! This solved my problem, thank you.

--

OS X 10.9.5 to Android 4.4.2 on Samsung SM-G800F (Galaxy S5 mini).

Reply