Photo by Shht!
I’ve already filed a report on the Apple website & am about to go phone them for help. I’m not expecting much & I’m getting seriously frustrated. Maybe it’s only on Windows 7, but the iPhone syncing process seems to have some serious flaws.
I’ve had an iPhone for exactly a month today. In that time I have come to be totally addicted & completely in love with the device. It’s sleek, stylish, easy-to-use and does everything I need from the device in my pocket. But it’s also BUGGY, really, really BUGGY to the point where it’s almost useless.
Just after Christmas I made the mistake of syncing my phone on my work machine, such that everything was erased from the phone. Ok, silly mistake, but it shouldn’t be that easy to wipe your mobile phone! When I got home and tried to sync everything back – it wouldn’t.
Each time I attempted to sync it would throw 3 or 4 unintelligable errors messages and then iTunes would refuse to recognised my iPhone. I’d then have to do a restore & start over with the sync. Eventually I realised I could sync only by syncing 1 or 2 apps at a time – not the whole lot. Problem solved. No more accidental work syncing for me!
Last week I connected my phone up for a routine sync – I had some new music I wanted to get onto the phone for the weekend – but again it threw 3 or 4 unintelligable errors (like -48, -49 and -2ksomething) and failed to sync. Everything seemed ok with the iPhone, however halfway through my weekend away my apps started to do the “flash-and-crash” thing. This has happened before and turning the iPhone off and on again normally fixes it, but not this time! I read that some people had found installing a new app fixes it, so I tried that and luckily it worked.
Now I’m home and my iPhone isn’t recognised by iTunes anymore. I get a message saying “an iPhone has been previously synced with the machine” and allowing me to either set the iPhone up as a new phone, or restore from a really old backup. In addition, when using the iPod function it only plays one track and then crashes.
I’ve tried searching the net to see if others have this issue, and if there’s something I’m doing wrong. Maybe it’s Windows 7, maybe it’s cos I’m using Google Sync, or maybe there is some rogue app causing havoc during the syncing process. All I know is that losing all my data every 2 weeks is rendering my iPhone totally useless.
</rant>
19th Jan
Manuel says:
Hey ErisDS!
Sad to hear about your Problems!
Have you already tried resetting it? There is a Method to reset it to Factory Settings! Maybe that’ll do the trick?
Regards,
Manuela aka. @dratir
19th Jan
Rob Mason says:
I feel for you hun. Have similar problems every so often:
1) When I upgrade the firmware all hell breaks loose, I lose all my data and it takes bets part of 5 hours to restore back to working order. During this time iTunes either refuses to recognise my iPhone at all or when it does throw numerous useless errors at me.
2) Every so often my library magically corrupts itself, meaning a full re-built of the data including re-importing all the music (circa 8GB).
I can’t help with this specific issue, but advice is to completely uninstall iTunes, reset the iPhone back to brick mode (aka: factory settings) and start again. Make sure you have a backup of your apps and music though just in case ;)
19th Jan
ErisDS says:
I have done the hold home+power til it resets – no change :(
I don’t want to restore it back to blank as it were – I’ll lose all my data AGAIN. It’s pointless having the thing if every 2 weeks you lose your data. I’ve no way to back it up either because iTunes doesn’t recognise it.
19th Jan
Anthony says:
I’d say remove your battery, but that isn’t an option. I hope you get things figured out and things usable without data loss. Keep us strangers on the internets informed!
19th Jan
ErisDS says:
Well it’s turning out to be a right fun bloody day. Called the Apple support line earlier only to be redirected to BT and told my line had been restricted (can’t make outgoing calls) because supposedly I haven’t paid my bill. Turns out that when I phoned them last year to change to pay by direct debit they took my bank details & cancelled my old payment method, but neglected to setup the direct debit. Entirely their fault but will still take up to 48 hours to be reconnected!
However, I did manage to convince BT to connect me to Apple support & I had a chat with a nice man called Edward who says that error code -48 is apparently a USB error. Supposedly they’ve had a lot of trouble with people connecting their iPhones to USB ports on the front of their PC where there is less power than at the back. He advised me to always use the original cable & connect at the back of the PC.
I did have to restore my phone back to 2 weeks ago and have lost tonnes of text messages and all my weight loss data. Very annoying. It has however synced fine ever since and I am just hopeful it will work from now on. Just have to remember to backup more regularly!
19th Jan
Marieke says:
Apple fanboys never write about these things! I thought Iphones were perfect.