iPhone 3G lost music - AGAIN

[MikeHalloran]

For the fourth time, my iPhone has lost all the music files on it, for no readily apparent reason. I just decided to listen to my music, and it wasn't there. None of it; not the stuff bought from Apple, not the stuff loaded on my PC. Nada.
The same behavior seems to plague all iPhones and all versions of iOS.

The official fix is to sync the unit to whatever desktop has my copy of iTunes on it.

Unfortunately, these amnesia attacks always occur when I am not near my desktop, as in 1500 miles away.

Has anyone heard of a fix that does not involve a sync with iTunes?

 

[drlex]

Forum601 ?


(

http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=601)

soi là, soi carré

 

[MikeHalloran]

Was that there before? If so, oops on me.

 

[MikeHalloran]

It's not without quirks, but the Galaxy Note continues to work okay.

This is about the iPhone 3G, non-S, which I have been using to check news and such over the local WiFi while the Galaxy is charging.

I figured what the hell, I'll accept the latest iTunes' offer to upgrade the iOS to 4.x, since an increasing number of iApps are unable to deal with iOS 3.1.3.

The upgrade started with a warning that the process was quite lengthy, and might take 'up to an hour'.

Ha. 24 hours later, iTunes was still thrashing, when I went away for the weekend.

When I came back, the computer had rebooted for reasons unknown and booted into CentOS, which it does by default. ... and the iPhone is still at iOS 3.1.3.

I'll probably try again someday.

 

[MikeHalloran]

After yet anotber failed upgrade I tried a mere sync of the iPhone.

It failed with the message:
"iTunes cannot sync Apps to the iPhone. ... because the apps installed on the iPhone could not be determined."

Don't you love seeing completely new error messages?

 

[cdogg]

I didn't see it mentioned so I thought I'd ask...

Have you tried using the "Erase All Content and Settings" feature or restoring the iPhone to its factory condition? If not, then I'd say you're getting to that point!

Backing up data:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766

Erasing content & settings:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2110

Restoring factory state:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414

Just as with any operating system, iOS can suffer from corrupt libraries, frameworks, and app extensions over time. The more you install and uninstall, the greater the chance.



-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Sp then I got a good sync, but all attempts to upgrade iOS seem to stall.
After a couple of hours, the 'Backing up iPhone' dialog box remains unchanged, except the progress bar bug stops moving. The iPhone itself continues to say 'Sync in Progress', and iTunes keeps cycling its advertising panels normally in the background.

I.e., I don't think I've got a problem within the iPhone, but instead a bug in the iTunes app. Behavior suggests that it's waiting for something that's not happening, and Apple's programming wizards didn't anticipate the situation and provide a timeout or a coherent error message.

.. as in "That OS call _never_ fails"...

 

[cdogg]

Well, it could be a lot of things. Although the behavior is seen with iTunes syncing, the application itself relies on core components of iOS to function properly. One of those core components could be corrupted.

If you can't get the backup to process, then you'll want to get as much as you can off the phone using other methods such as email, cloud service, etc., and then try the factory reset option. That's probably your best bet at this point. Time consuming sure, but at least it might keep it from becoming a fancy paperweight!