My iPhone is being very weird: when I plug it into my iMac the computer doesn’t seem to recognize it any more. How do I fix it so I can be a happy iPhone user again?
I recently encountered a similar problem, though I am guessing that it was for a different reason: I have three different Macs that I will occasionally use to connect to the iPhone. One day I plugged my own early 4GB Apple iPhone into my MacBook and while I didn’t expect to be able to add music to it since it wasn’t the primary computer with which I synced the unit, I was nonetheless quite surprised to realize that iTunes had lost all ability to differentiate between music, video, photos and other content.
How did I know? By looking at the summary graph in the app. It looked like this:
That’s not good. No way around it. Since I know I have a backup of the Address Book and all the music and video that I had squeezed onto the device, I thought that it was time to experiment with a restore. So I clicked “Restore” in iTunes.
Then the first of many rather scary warnings popped up:
I clicked “Restore” again and adverted my eyes, fearing the very worst: a completely wiped, out of the box new iPhone with nothing on it.
Rather to my surprise, iTunes took advantage of the restore process to also upgrade the phone software (I had thought I was up to date already):
Since I was already committed to the process at that point (mentally, at least, I suppose I could have clicked “Cancel”) I choose “Next” and then watched a progress bar for a few minutes as it downloaded and installed:
… and watched a different progress bar:
… and yet another:
Finally, after much progress (as you can see!) iTunes told me that the iPhone was restored:
At this point I waited and after a minute or two the phone restarted itself and reappeared in Apple iTunes:
That was, I don’t mind saying, quite a relief! Nowhere in the process of restoring an iPhone does Apple say anything about being able to restore the backed up data. I thought I’d have an unknown phone and be manually configuring everything, but, fortunately, that wasn’t the case!
No question, I choose “Restore” and “Continue” here and got to see yet another progress bar dance on my screen:
If this were a musical, we’d have Danny Elfman writing themes for these progress bars, wouldn’t we? Or would we trim that part of the production down a bit? 🙂
Once again, iTunes wanted to restart the phone:
Once it did, things did start to look a bit better:
(though it’s still a puzzle what “Other” data is using 188MB. My address book, etc., aren’t that big!)
Since I have my iTunes / iPhone setup configured to automatically sync with my music library (well, a subset of it with a 4GB phone) the next prompt I got — after it had ostensibly restored from backup — was to resync my music:
And so I did, clicking on the fateful “Erase and Sync” button. And guess what I saw?
Finally, my iPhone was restored and resynced. Net result? I lost the photos that I’d downloaded on the phone, but otherwise all the notes, phone numbers, weather locations, timezones in the clock, old text message discussions, icons, custom bookmarks, etc etc etc were all restored without incident.
It was a tiny bit unnerving to wipe a well-used cellphone and restore it, and I’m still a bit puzzled what’s in that 188MB of “Unknown” data, but it is a survivable process and there’s precious little that appears to be lost along the way.
Oh, and you get to see a lot of progress bars!
Dave, Thanks for the tip on restoring an iphone – just wondering if you have had any success restoring an iphone without a backup? like doing data recovery on the iphone? This would be really helpful as I have a phone here thats been wiped but no backup.
Cheers
Paul
I phone in 1303 continue without wi- fi? you need a network connection to set up app store , i tunes store, i cloud and other services. continue use wi- fi It is Aption how to take it in normal mode
i am trying to restore my iphone but getting itune error 1 what can i do
I was trying to put my music from my old iphone into my new iphone 4s. I clicked on “restore from the back up which I thought was the right thing. Unfortunately it was not and it restored my new iphone4s back to my old iphone and now I am missing all new contacts and pictures, etc. I had on my new iphone4s and phone numbers. Can this be undone or fixed? Help! please……..I had pictures of my nephew that cannot every be replaced 🙁
I recently upgraded my iphone to 5.0. . At about the same time I upgraded my laptop to the new vista operating system. Apparently nothing got backed up. I lost over 700 pictures(including my grandsons first cries!!) and 500 songs. Is there anyway to restore the lost??? Heart broken
Hi, somehow my phone went into recovery, i don’t know how.
i connected my iphone to my computer to restore from back up, but it only backed up from 2011. when i have synced from 2012 up to date. But it won’t give me any sync from 2012 that i recently synced. because i need the notes, pictures, etc that i sync from 2012.
i have a iphone 3.0 (the old one).
please help me because i know that my lost information is somewhere in my hp microsoft computer. Cause the computer saves everything. or in my iphone sim card.
my number is 240-644-3381 if anybody can help me retrieve it. I’ll pay you if you help me find my notes, pictures, etc, Very important thks.
Try using Total Saver from myphonedata.com
For $6, it is worth every penny – gets back all contacts, media files, texts and notes.
i have upgraded my iphone 3 to 4.2.1 version and it locked up and now it wont let me restore it to factory settings
Felicity, no worries. Your boyfriend can take a deep breath. All he has to do is the next time he plugs it into *his* computer, the computer he uses to sync the phone, he needs to click on the “Restore” button and everything’ll magically show back up on the iPhone. (well, it’ll take a while…)
im using my boyfriends iphone and i plugged it into my laptop and everything has wiped off it! i have a ipod touch and its made the iphone setting change to the ipod touch setting! iv lost all his contacts all his photos and its just totally changed! is there anyway i can get them bk! helppppp!!
seriously thank you so much! literally exact same thing happened to me and i followed your steps and i recovered everything- photos and contacts (well not my apps but thats the least of my worries)
again thanks so much!
-isabelle
i have to restore my iphone3gs,but due to weak net connection somtimes it disconnect while ristoring so i again have to restore from first..it takes 4 to 5 hours,,so i cant maintain connection till that time…so help me with any idea..
ilocked my iphone and i cantget back in to it can u help me
Hi, please help me. I purchase my college bound kid a new phone and inherited iPHONE, the old one :). I was wanting to add new apps and I was told I need it update, so I try doing that thru iTUNES, but it asked me for my daughter credentails; I did that, but it didnt do anything, so I unplug from itunes and try again; this time it asked me if I wanted to set up iphone with my name and I say YES; it did all the loading and things, BUT I lost all my contacts pics, etc? Why didnt it transfer, not to say why did it erase why I had before?
when we switch phones, I keep all she had (aps,photos,contacts, etc) and just added the few I had from my sim card of my regular phone.
Is there anyway I can get the contacts and pictures back? Can I just restore is as what it was before?
Please respond ASAP 🙁
Hi guys, I have a problem with my iphone (2g) ,
i taking iphone on the desk and then automatically restarting and my contact is gone ! i don’t touch my phone and when i unlock phone and see contact list … there is no contact ! 850 contact deleted automatically !
i don’t understand this crash ! PLEASE HELP !!!!!!!
Yes, it’ll wipe everything other than the default iOS apps, Julio, but you should have a copy of every app you’ve purchased (and every free app you’ve downloaded) in your iTunes sync, and the first time you plug the 3gs into your computer, they should all copy back onto it.
wiil resetting iphone 3gs to factory settings erase every purchased application?