iCloud Photos STILL not syncing (Windows 8.1 new iCloud 4.1)

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SimmZ2008 Author

Level 1

10 points

iCloud Photos STILL not syncing (Windows 8.1 new iCloud 4.1)

I am pretty tired of how iCloud is working on PC... But as an IT professional, I own a few Windows PC at home and work because Apple is definitely not the answer to all your computer's needs, especially in a large business. So on all my Windows PCs (both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1), the iCloud Photos sync is always broken (stop syncing and never worked back).

I followed, SO MANY TIMES, the common procedure to force iCloud Photos to re-sync (from scratch) which is :

- Sign Out iCloud Control Panel

- Force quit (kill) iCloud process in Windows task manger

- Delete "%appdata%/Apple Computer/MediaStream/" folder content

- Delete "iCloud Photos" folder from the "Pictures" folder in your user home

- Sign-in iCloud Control Panel and enable iCloud Photo sync

- Wait iCloud Photos to sync... and yes, it sync!

Yes, that work... for the initial sync... but a few days later, most of times the day after, but sometime after a few computer's reboot, iCloud Photo do not sync anymore and is "broken" again. Sometime I also noticed the "iCloud Photo Downloader" process are running (stuck) on high-CPU in the task manager, but still not syncing if I leave it running for several hours...

Every time Apple release a new iCloud Control Panel (for Windows) update, I hope they will improve the application's performance, but it's always a complete deception. It's probably intentional from Apple to leave know issues or performance issues, since they intentionally make Windows compatible software working bad for many years ago, because I also use a few Mac too (Yosemite) and everything work fine on Mac.

I am now using the latest version 4.1 on all my Windows computer and they are all broken again since a few days...

Anybody know how to get a working and RELIABLE iCloud Photo sync on Windows PCs? Both Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, doesn't do differences...

BTW, all my Windows PC are pretty clean installed and they are not having much things in common, some are at home, other at work, some Windows 8.1, other are Windows 7. There's NO similarities betweens my Windows PCs except my iCloud account as well, which is working fine on my two Apple computers, remember... As I told you I am an IT professional and all my Window's computers are very clean and most of they have been clean-installed recently, without any success.

Thanks!

Microsoft Surface Pro 3-OTHER, Windows 8, i5 256 GB

Posted on May 11, 2015 7:25 AM

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Answer 1

wilf21

Level 1

20 points

May 11, 2015 1:25 PM in response to SimmZ2008

I have exactly the same problem. Win 8.1 64 bit, Photostream pics just don't appear on my PC. If I un-tick "Photos" on the iCloud control panel, save and then re-tick the option and save again, I may, if I'm lucky, get one or two photos coming through from my photostream, then it stops again.

This has been happening for many months and since my PC was clean rebuilt recently there has been no change.

Since this has been going on for a long time and I have reported it to Apple a number of times, I'm guessing that they are not serious about doing anything to fix the problem on a PC ... hey, as long as it works on a Mac I guess they must be happy.

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Answer 2

Jun 3, 2015 6:02 AM in response to SimmZ2008

Same here, iCloud 4.1, Windows 8 x64, i7 Quad. Notebook fan runs all the time with iCloud installed on that machine.

Finally gave up and deleted it, syncing now via Google...

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Answer 3

SimmZ2008 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 3, 2015 6:30 AM in response to MartinB77

Thanks folks! I appreciate to know I am not the only one and that you are experiencing identical issues than mine!

In the other hand as an IT expert since 2001 (especially an Apple trained expert), I am surprised than no more people are reporting this issue because I can reproduce it easily in a fresh test lab on Windows 7 or Windows 8 PCs, so this should definitely be a KNOWN issue...

Or in the other hand can it be a server's side error where a few iCloud accounts can be corrupted somehow on Apple servers side??

For my own case, I use iCloud Photo sync since *DAY 1* when Apple launch it and I am a real photography enthusiast, no joke I took over 20,000 photos with my iOS devices since launch...

Just brainstorming about the issue origin...

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Answer 4

wilf21

Level 1

20 points

Jun 3, 2015 8:49 AM in response to SimmZ2008

What makes this problem more surprising is that the other aspects of the iCloud control panel seem to be working ok ... Mail contacts with Outlook, Bookmarks with Firefox have always worked correctly as far as I can ascertain. It's just the photo stream which doesn't synchronise and that is intermittent; it may work for a day or two, then not work for weeks, etc.

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Answer 5

Jun 12, 2015 5:37 AM in response to SimmZ2008

Ugh, I have the exact same problem.. I have looked up several YouTube videos for troubleshooting, but there does not seem to be a video for Sync Problem Fix for iCloud 4.1 on Windows 8.1 ::sigh:: This is annoying, and I am upset that Apple is not putting any effort on such issues! Do they seriously expect everyone to purchase MacBook-series laptops and/or iMac?? I actually do have a MacBook air, but some stuff don't work well with Mac OS, so for those certain stuff I use my Dell laptop. This is frustrating.. 😟

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Answer 6

Jul 21, 2015 2:38 AM in response to SimmZ2008

It would be really great if they would fix this, at long last. I tried some other fixes I read about, such as reverting to an older version of iCloud for Windows without success. I would like to have another Mac Book laptop someday, but until then it would be great if this worked better. Have instead started to access photo stream via Flickr. They have made great improvements the last few months to expand connectivity and options.

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