For the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that iTunes running on my PC wasn’t recognizing my iPhone at all. My wife’s iPod Nano came up just fine though, so I started wondering what was up. Realizing at some point I would need to connect for a backup and future upgrades, I started looking into fixing the issue.

The following steps are intended to help you out of a similar situation without going through what I did to my iPhone, which ended up requiring a full restore from scratch. I’ll let you know how I went wrong.

To get your PC to recognize your iPhone, you’ll have to essentially uninstall every piece of Apple software that you have running (assuming you’re just a standard iTunes user):

DO NOT FOLLOW THE PROCEDURE TO PUT YOUR DEVICE IN RESTORE MODE
(I did before I ran all of the steps below, and it cost me a lot of additional time and headaches.)

1. Navigate to your Add/Remove Programs (Programs and Features on Vista) area within the Control Panel.
2. Start removing these apps (in this order, do not reboot until they’re all removed):
   • Quicktime
   • Apple Mobile Device Support
   • Apple Software Update
   • Bonjour
   • iTunes
3. Reboot your PC
4. Using Internet Explorer (I know, I know, shoot me later though), browse to apple.com/itunes and click the download link for the latest version of iTunes. From here, run the install program directly from the link, do not save it to your computer. (I do not know the reason for this, I just followed the instructions per a video I saw on Youtube).

You should not need to reboot after the re-installation of iTunes is complete.  My copy even found my library automatically, which I assume is due to some saved settings in the registry.  Connect your iPhone in and, voila!

Disclaimer: The procedure listed here worked perfectly for me AFTER I already put my phone in restore mode.  I am 99% sure that it will work WITHOUT putting your iPhone in restore mode first.  I just happened to find the steps after I had already bricked my phone. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!!!

This evening, I was browsing the free apps in the Apple iTunes App Store and I came across Air Sharing (Link to iTunes App Store), which happened to be number 1 on the top 25 list.  I downloaded it just to see what it’s all about.  Basically, the concept is simple.  The iPhone doesn’t come with the ability to be used as a storage device, as did most of the original iPod devices from Apple.  Air Sharing creates a WebDav file share on your iPhone that can be mounted onto a Windows, Linux, or Mac computer with ease.  Full instructions are included when you download the application.
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