It all started innocently. Saturday was a lazy morning – the perfect time to sync my iPhone and update the many apps that had newer versions. It should only take about five minutes, right? Not so much. When all is right with the world, an iPhone update is painless – just as easy as charging it, really.
Not this day. Apparently, all was not right with the world… at least Apple world. Well, MY Apple world anyway.
I recently updated iTunes to the Windows 64bit version of 10.2.1.1 – the latest and greatest (the latter remains to be seen.) I connected my phone. “Loading drivers for your hardware.” Good sign. “There was a problem loading your drivers. They may be missing or corrupted.” Not a good sign. No chirp. No iTunes opening up. Hmmm. Yep, the cord is connected. I know, I’ll disconnect and reconnect it. In “rinse, lather, repeat” fashion, again and again I connected and disconnected. No chirp, no iTunes. Not even once.
Then the reality set in. If I can’t sync my iPhone, my on-the-way iPad2 won’t sync, either. Yikes.
After hours of reading apple.com documents and discussions followed by amateur troubleshooting, decided to call Apple. The first “advisor” was very kind and helpful, and after putting me on hold, connected me with her supervisor, Josh. Also very helpful and kind, it became obvious that he was some kind of Apple ninja walking me through all kinds of steps, including uninstalling Norton Internet Security and repeatedly uninstalling and installing iTunes in different ways. Over two hours later we had done everything Josh could think to do.
Josh said it. “Why don’t we give this a break. Let me talk to my colleagues and do some research. I’ll call you tomorrow at 3:00pm.”
Noooooooo.
Computer broken. Stripped of software. Over two hours with Apple’s finest has left me high and dry. I worked on it the rest of the day and night, and finally restored my computer to its blissful working state from several weeks previous (thanks to a cloned backup.) I was back up and running with an older version of iTunes and synced my iPhone flawlessly. Apps updated and feeling productive – that’s a perfect place to end the day.
Fast forward.
Sunday – 3:00pm. It’s Josh. Josh from Apple. He really called – and on time, too. Apple ninja is now Apple keeping his word hero. He says he managed to find an obscure discussion thread with a confirmed solution to the problem. After we hung up, I uninstalled old working iTunes and installed new, mean iTunes. Same problem.
I rebooted and followed Josh’s directions to the letter.
BAM! It worked! Josh found me a fix for my problem!!!
Josh not only helped me fix my problem, he restored my faith in customer service. He went above and beyond to help me and in the process made his company even more amazing in my eyes. Apple came through because Josh came through. I hope they know he’s amazing.
By the way, this was the solution:
Delete the 2 Apple Mobile Device USB Driver files. If you right click on the Apple Mobile Device USB Driver in Device Manager and select properties it will tell you where they are located in the windows folder. My 2 files for windows 7 64 bit were:
usbaapl64.sys
usbaaplrc.dll
With iPhone disconnected, restart computer and press F8 to enter boot menu.
Select boot option without digital driver signature support.
After boot, connect ipod and driver should automatically install correctly without error.
