A warning: this post is long and uses colorful language in places. Then again, the journey of getting a phone to sync with a computer software program was needless, too. If you are looking for a fix, you might want to skip to the end. If you are in the business, please continue on. I assure you the length of this post will not match the length, intensity, and frustration level that the combined advice offered me. No computers, personnel, or cell phones were harmed in the making of this post--although there were moments when the thoughts of taking my twelve gage out and shooting all involved did run through my head.

I am not a programmer, tech support person, or computer geek. I most certainly do not classify as a “Blondestar” user or the wonderful individual who used their CD drive tray as a remote cup holder and then called tech support because it broke. I know a little more than the average person only because I use the technology and research the product. Unfortunately, I did not research the iphone. A friend had purchased the first generation one when it first came out, and I liked it so much that I wanted one as soon as my phone contract was up. I didn’t realize that there were “issues” between Apple and the Microsoft.

I should have done my homework…

When you buy an iPhone, you should be able to plug the phone into the computer and it should work with your existing iTunes software, provided that you have upgraded it to the newest release. The phone comes with an ingenious cord that serves as both a charger and a USB cable. When I plugged the phone in I expected it to behave like all Plug-in-Play hardware, which it did. The phone responded to being plugged in; my computer told me that it recognized a device, loaded the software and drivers, and then told me that my iPhone was ready. At this point the phone should have turned on and my iTunes program should have popped open, but this did not happen. I opened the iTunes program, and my iPhone did not show up. It was as if I had not plugged the phone in at all. I unplugged the phone and plugged it in. The phone buzzed in recognition that it was connected to the computer; the computer dinged that it had something plugged into the USB port. Then nothing. (10 minutes)

Inquiring minds want to know, “Is it the software?’

I accessed the iPhone support page through the iTunes program and did exactly what it told me to do.
1. Go to the programs section of my control panel.
2. Uninstall ALL iTunes software: iTunes, QuickTime, Bonjour, and Apple Mobile Service. (30 minutes)
3. Restart computer. (5 minutes)
4. Reinstall new upgrade iTunes 8.2 (even though I already had this one on my computer). (2 hours to download and install)
Finally the moment of truth arrived; I opened the iTunes folder and plugged in the phone. Once again, nothing. I reread the steps again and then tried this:
1. Go to the programs section of my control panel.
2. Uninstall ALL iTunes software: iTunes, QuickTime, Bonjour, and Apple Mobile Service. (30 minutes)
3. Go to Start and search computer for iTunes folders. (6 minutes)
4. Delete all copies from my computer and the recycle bin. (15 minutes)
5. Restart computer. (5 minutes)
6. Reinstall new upgrade iTunes 8.2. I reused the downloaded software so that it only took to 30 minutes load.
Nothing happened again, SO I REPEATED THE STEPS AGAIN. (Like that would help…
1. Go to the programs section of my control panel.
2. Uninstall ALL iTunes software: iTunes, QuickTime, Bonjour, and Apple Mobile Service. (30 minutes)
3. Go to Start and search computer for iTunes folders. (6 minutes)
4. Delete all copies from my computer and the recycle bin. (15 minutes)
5. Restart computer. (5 minutes)
6. Reinstall new upgrade iTunes 8.2 (30 minutes)
7. Restarted the computer. (5 minutes)

What was Einstein’s definition of insanity? Something along the lines that insanity was repeating the same experiment with the expectation of a different outcome. Well, I had repeated this process twice and the outcome was the same, it was getting late, so I gave up and went to bed.

Where angels descend and, suddenly, I think it might be the phone….

The next morning I awoke with a renewed purpose. I first defined the problem. iPhone was not showing up in iTunes. I ran iTunes diagnostic tool. It told me that my network looked good and that the software was loaded correctly. When it got to the iPhone, it couldn’t find it on my computer. The software was loaded but not the driver. Ok, I thought. I saw it load on the computer. So what gives? I plugged in the phone, and opened my computer. It was there alright, identified as a CAMERA. Why would it think it was a camera? Clearly this was a phone issue. It was not installing the phone driver properly. SO, I uninstalled and reinstalled EVERYTHING including the phone driver, but it did not make a difference. (3 hours) I got up and fixed myself a Coke Zero and then sat back down.

I accessed iPhone’s fix tool on the Apple Support Website. It prompted me to
1. Check cords
2. Uninstall itunes
3. Restart
4. Reinstall
5. Restart
6. Plug phone in

Nope…didn’t work. What next? I was desperate to make this work and the only bit of advice was taking me nowhere. There was also this niggling feeling in the back of my head that something just wasn’t right. What about this inability to find the driver? Did I need a third party sync helper? Why is the phone coming up as a camera? How can I make my computer see that it is not a camera? Can I find the phone driver online and manually reinstall it? But iPhone seemed to be confidently going a different way in its fixes. What do I know? So, I clicked over to the next level of fixes offered by iPhone.

But wait, there’s more: forays into risky run fixes…

When dealing with your personal computer there are two general rules: save and back up often, and never fool-around with the command prompt. These rules can only be broken if you are a qualified technician or are on the phone with a qualified technician. Determined that the fix is out there and Apple has it, I am still running the iPhone fix tool. It asks me to do this:

1. At start find Run
2. Type in services.msc
3. Click on the iTunes program
4. Click on the stop iTunes
5. Click on the start itunes
6. Click on Apple Mobile Devices
7. Click on Stop Apple Mobile Devices
8. Click on Start Apple Mobile Devices
9. Click out of services

I am immediacy stuck by the fact that they are asking me to do this. Who do they think I am? A Mac owner. Yeah, right. But I tried it, and my computer did not explode, but the fix didn’t work either. As a matter of fact, I am not even sure what they told me had any effect on my system at all. Oh, ok, yes. I do know what they wanted me to do and what it should have done in my system. I know that it stopped the program and reset it. But it didn’t make the iPhone pop up in the iTunes program or anywhere else on my computer. I was back again with nothing.

The next fix was even more a violation into the technician-consumer code of conduct. The iPhone fix tool told me to, (get this), uninstall AND reinstall iTunes. So, I complied, just in case the other six times I had completed this process hadn’t really taken. Maybe the iPhone was just making sure that this was what I really wanted. Here are the steps lest you forget them.

1. Uninstall itunes
2. Make sure to clean out the files you uninstalled and delete them
3. Restart
4. Reinstall
5. Restart computer
6. Open iTunes
7. Plug phone in

Nope didn’t change from the first time. I admit, I was becoming a little agitated at this point. “**** You have GOT to be kidding me!,” I yelled at the computer. I clicked through the iPhone fix program again until I got to the next fix. Thank God I bookmarked that sucker before restarting. Low and behold it was another journey into a Run prompt fix.

1. Go to start
2. Access Run
3. Type in msconfig (I had to pause on this one. I was reconfiguring my Windows, this did not feel right coming from Apple people, but I complied. Resistance in the tech fix world is futile.)
4. When the window opens tick the selective start up box
5. Choose the startup tab
6. Disable all
7. Enable only apple and iTunes programs
8. Click the services tabs
9. Tick the hide all MS programs
10. Uncheck all the boxes except the Apple programs
11. Click on Apply
12. Restart the computer

The computer booted faster than normal devoid of virus protection. I clicked on iTunes, plugged in phone, nothing. I returned to the Apple site only to find that the iPhone Fix Tool was out of fixes. So, thinking it must be human error, I reapplied the two fixes again. Nothing worked. The last bit of advice the iPhone Fix Tool offered me was to call or make an appointment for Apple’s Support Services. There I could have a friendly technician pat my head and run my tummy while helping me through these issues. After pouring a hefty shot of rum into my diet coke, I clicked on the link and made an appointment for 10:30 the next day. I would have to borrow my teenager’s cell phone as I could not talk on my iPhone and use it in the service call. I knew this would cause great separation anxiety for my twelve year old son as he might miss a vital networking call or text message, but it was a sacrifice I convinced him to make. It was my only choice as I knew there would be no way I could pry the phone from my sixteen-year old daughter. What played most advantageous what the fact that my son wants an iPhone, so getting this computer thing fixed before he gets one would be important. Then again at twelve, he could practically build and program his own nanobots but is too lazy playing Xbox and antagonizing the cat with pseudo fart noises to attend to that goal. I logged off having spent too much time on the computer, but I was optimistic, as well. After all, it was probably something really silly like forgetting to check a box in the iTunes program or forgetting to let the dog out. The tech would call, I would tell him my issue, and voila!

I step into a big pile of dog poop…

Apple Services called me on time. They guy on the other end was an American so I could easily understand his accent. This was a plus after having to repeat things to the HP’s Techs the year before when I had motherboard issues with my brand new computer. HP was good but difficult to communicate with. I gave Apple’s tech a quick rundown of the issue and my attempted fixes. I asked him out the phone showing up as a camera in my system. He assured me that this was perfectly normal for the phone to show up as a camera. I felt some relief. He then read what I wrote on the communication form and then we got started. I told him I was operating on a Vista system. He though that Vista systems were more secure than XP but no big issue. He took me on a different track. He asked me to go to the control panel and create a new administrator account. I accessed the panel and created an account which I named iTunes. It opened and took five or six minutes set itself up. Strangely enough there was an iTunes icon on this new account. I clicked on it and it began installing iTunes. Thirty minutes later it was installed and I clicked on it. I plugged in the iPhone. It loaded. Then nothing. Forty five minutes and nothing. He asked if there was another computer that I could use. My husband’s workhorse is next to my laptop station in the office, so I switched seats. I told the guy that my husband’s system is an older XP upgrade while I run Vista Business on my computer. The tech guy thought this was fine. There is already an account set up just for the kids to access iTunes. It is an administrator’s account so there is no problem with me installing things. I plugged the phone in. It installed and, suddenly, iTunes pops up and says that I need to upgrade to use the iPhone on iTunes. It is progress. So, we download and install. By this time, I really hate the fact that I left my house with accelerated broadband cable (sped up because I was such a good customer) to move out to the country to a rinky-dinky DSL line that is only 200 feet from the junction box. It is like going from a fire hose to a straw and this straw was sucking. Luckily the cable workers must have had a busy day and were not gathered around the box talking on the phones, so the software downloaded a little faster than usual. In forty minutes we were ready to plug in the phone again and, behold, the phone worked! We established that it was not a phone issue. I unplugged the phone and returned back to my computer docking station. “What do we do now,” I asked? It was close to 12:45. I had been on the phone for over two hours. He politely told me that it was probably a third party software conflict. What he really meant was that, “M’am, you have a Vista system, and quite frankly Vista sucks. You need to hook up with those Microsoft bastages that created that load of dog droppings and have THEM tell you how to fix it. What did you expect? You want a PC with VISTA to hook up with an Apple, oh PLEASE.” I sensed his lunch hour was nearing, so I thanked him and let him go. I knew how to test for third party conflicts. You delete programs, right? So this is what I did. I went through my list of possible suspects. Uninstalling them one by one as they screamed that they were innocent for this whole mess until I came to the conclusion that I would collapse in exhaustion if I didn’t log off the computer, so that is exactly what I did. Later on, as I drifted off to sleep with the knowledge that somewhere out there, there were happier iPhone users who could use all of their phone’s functions, I thought of every failed fix that I had tried. Suddenly it came to me, the INTERNET! I could take it to the forums on the Internet. Surely, someone would have a fix there.

More flinging than fixes…

The next morning, I awoke fresh. I booted up the laptop on a mission. I was going to find the fix today or die trying. I googled my search with precision keywords. “iPhone fix for Vista and iPhone not showing up in iTunes.” I immediately found several user groups with discussion threads matching my topics. Most of them gave the same fixes the iTunes and iPhone website gave me. The only exception was that there was a whole lot of product bashing as well. The people on the Vista boards denying that it was not their fault, that Apple released the product too close to their ship date for them to work with the system and any possible issues. Anyway the issue was with the phone and not with the system. The people on the Apple boards offered the same fixes on the Vista boards. I pretty much checked off what I had done already and moved on. One site claimed that the whole problem was caused when the computer’s user control did not allow the driver to install. At this point I was beyond reason, so the idea that the user control would allow some software to be installed while blocking was entirely plausible. To fix this, while I installed the iTunes package, I had to have user control turned off. These were the recommended steps:

1. Uninstall itunes
2. Make sure to clean out the files you uninstalled and delete them
3. Click on control panel
4. Click on User Accounts
5. Click on Make Changes to your user account
6. Click on turn user account control off
7. Restart computer
8. Reinstall
9. Restart computer
10. Open iTunes
11. Plug phone in

Did it work? Nope. On one board a guy claimed to have fixed the whole mess in thirty seconds. All you had to do was access run, and type in “net localgroup administrators service/add.” According to him, this miracle cure would fix all my problems. I know that the miracle cure was too good to be true, but I was nearing the end. I followed the directions. For all I know, by typing in this command code, I was opening the back door to the universe and releasing Hellboy. Later on in the evening, I would find him crawling in my back closet wailing to be fed. My son and the cat would be thrilled, but my iPhone still wouldn’t talk to iTunes or sync with any other software on my computer.

I slogged back to the board to continue reading. iPhone screamed that it has a fix called iTunes 8.2, and it was Vista that was the problem. Vista screamed back that they had a fix called Service Pack 2.0, but it was an iPhone issue. Apple screamed that 8.2 is a larger upgrade than Vista’s 2.0 service pack. I bailed out of the board before they started whipping out slide rulers to measure their upgrades in order to verify that my Vista had the upgraded service pack. I was sure it did because I have windows update and the computer spends lots of time telling me that it is now updating utilities and to please do something less stressful. I went to my computer’s properties and checked. I was operating on service pack 1. So what were you doing all those evenings when you claimed you were “updating?” After spending thirty minutes assuring Windows Visa that I indeed wanted to download the file, that is why I pressed the download button. I finally found the right download button hidden at the very top left hand page. It took three hours to download and an hour and thirty minutes to install, not including three restarts of the computer. Once again, I repeated the steps to reinstall iTunes:

1. Uninstall itunes
2. Make sure to clean out the files you uninstalled and delete them
3. Restart
4. Reinstall
5. Restart computer
6. Open iTunes
7. Plug phone in

I was taking no chances in messing this up. I turned off the firewall, virus scan, anything that moved in the computer, user account whatever, it was all turned off. The software loaded, I restarted the computer, and then plugged in the phone…no fix. I ran the iTunes diagnostic to see what it now says. It repeats, “Apple Mobile Device Driver Not Installed, MORON.” I have to see it for myself. I open my device manager and click on the device driver under the human interface tab. It is labeled Apple iPhone. Ok… this is CRAP, who’s the moron now iTunes? I ask the driver to reinstall. I tell it to go online to find a new driver. It searches for ten minutes then announces everything is hunky-dory. That the driver is up to date. This is a complete and total lie because if everything was hunky-dory, the phone would be getting on with the computer. Instead they are sitting like two mutes yelling at each other from different rooms. So, I tell it to search the computer for the driver. It suggests that I should look in the INF file. This sounds reasonable to me, but after a short search, it tells me that the “Apple mobile device driver is NOT FOUND.” I know the computer is not going to fess up and tell me where it put the driver, so I pulled out the big guns and searched the whole darn C drive using the Vista search tool and using the complicated words: Apple Mobile Device Driver. It returned with the ironically viral name: HIVESFT. I clicked on it. The computer thinks about it; the universe remains intact. I do not restart the system. I do not even open iTunes. I just plug the damn phone in. To my complete amazement iTunes pops up. The phone connected and synched with my computer. After a few minutes, where I tested the validity of my fix, I was able to register my phone and upload music and videos. I was a happy camper again. It took me a total time of thirty one hours to find a fix for this issue. Actually, if I had listened to iTunes and followed my initial instincts about the device driver being in the wrong location, I probably would have found the fix earlier. But when you don’t know a whole lot, you really want someone to guide you through the experience. I love my iPhone. I liked it before it hooked to the computer; now that its real power is unleashed, I love it. For those of you out there with Vista, good luck—I hear it is really secure.