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iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 13. Jun 2009, 18:53
by antieuclid
I'm running a Windows 7 guest on VirtualBox 2.2.4 in Ubuntu 9.04. The whole reason I'm messing around with VirtualBox is so that I could sync my iPhone in iTunes. I didn't have any trouble installing Windows or getting iTunes set up, and I even got iTunes to sync with the phone once. But ever since that first sync it won't do it again. It just hangs at "Syncing antieuclid's iPhone" and doesn't advance to loading my podcasts even if I leave it overnight. I've tried everything I can think of, including restoring the phone (do not try this if you don't have access to a Mac or standalone Windows with iTunes. It got stuck half way through.) and nothing's worked. Has anyone else had this problem and how can I fix it?

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 13. Jun 2009, 19:09
by Perryg
This seems to be an issue with just about everyone that tries this in Windows operating in VirtualBox. You can search for others with this problem by searching:
iphone ipod site:forums.virtualbox.org in Google

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 13. Jun 2009, 19:41
by antieuclid
Believe me, I've read all of those. I've been working on this for three days ever since my mac died. But they all seem to be talking about relatively old versions of VirtualBox and I was hoping there was a fix. Plus most of the longer threads seem to be dealing with getting Windows to recognize the iphone, which isn't my problem.

I actually seem to have discovered an odd workaround. Windows crashed last time it was open and because I wasn't paying attention as it booted, it went into safe mode. Just to see if it helped, I tried syncing while in safe mode and it's working. I'll have to try again once it's in normal mode to see whether it was some sort of magic Jesus crash that fixed something or whether it's something specific about safe mode.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 13. Jun 2009, 19:56
by Perryg
Well now that is interesting! Was it safe mode with or without networking?

Seems like you may have stumbled on the holy grail for Ipod / Iphone users if you can pinpoint what the real problem is.

Keep us posted.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 13. Jun 2009, 20:53
by antieuclid
I FOUND THE FIX!

Don't ask me why this could ever work, but it does. I couldn't replicate the successful sync booting normally, or when I deliberately went into safe mode. But as I was thinking about that one weird safe mode boot, I remembered that the screen was tiny and the colors were all off, so I started playing around with the display settings. I set the display resolution to 800x600 from inside the Windows display settings, but couldn't figure out how to manually adjust color settings. So I just saved it all at 800x600 and opened up iTunes. iTunes gave me a message complaining that the screen was too small, but I closed it and iTunes opened anyway. There were areas of the UI that were cut off, but when I hit the sync button, it went off without a hitch.

So after three days of messing around with USB drivers, user permissions, and software updates, the problem was solved by changing the resolution of my imaginary screen. Computers are extremely weird.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 29. Jun 2009, 22:06
by tcg
Works! Changing the display to 800x600 then syncing works. Thank you so very much.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 3. Jul 2009, 22:01
by lumpy211
Changing the resolution worked for me too. It had taken almost 30 mins to sync, during which time iTunes just said "Syncing iPod Touch". Almost as soon as I cut down the resolution it actually started transferring files. Any idea as to the cause of this?

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 3. Jul 2009, 22:29
by rynop
Thank you so much for finding this. Works for me too. ubuntu 9.04 + xp. What a pain, and what a non intuitive work around.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 9. Jul 2009, 13:23
by davepattersonbristol
I also have the iPhone problem.

Sony Vaio laptop. Host is Ubuntu 9.04. Guest is windows 7.
I started with VBox2.2.4 a couple of weeks ago. Upgraded to VBox3 last night. Didn't appear to help.

Smaller screen sizes did appear to get things moving but it still feels very slow syncing podcast files (~50MB each).

My livescribe pulse pen shows the same behaviour when syncing over USB. I left it over night and the sync worked but it was hours rather than minutes.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 17. Aug 2009, 19:55
by rtirrell
I have yet to try this workaround. However, my iPhone syncs were really slow due to USB activity running too slowly -- and writing files to a flash drive still occurs at 1.1 speeds at 800x600. So I'm not sure that this fix will help with iTunes devices. Will see...

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 3. Sep 2009, 18:46
by HalJ
I've been struggling with this problem for days. Switching to 800x600 fixed it for me. Thanks!

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 23. Oct 2009, 13:23
by reader4
I seem to be having the same problem, but changing resolution did not help. When the iPod is connected, Windows prompts me with the "the device could perform faster on a USB 2.0" message, but 2.0 is enabled in my VM and the device is physically on a 2.0 slot. This is only a problem for my iPod Video, not my new iPod shuffle. Syncing will start, but at some point I will get a delayed write error from windows saying some data could not be written and was lost, then iTunes will tell me it could not read/write from the device. No rhyme or reason either - sometimes I will get 5GB worth to sync before the problem - other time < 1GB. Hugely frustrating as I had been using this method for years without much trouble.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 4. Nov 2009, 21:57
by seretur
My Vbox set up automatically the virtual machine on 800x600, so syncing it seems to work just fine. I said it seems because earlier i tried to update iPod's firmware and it crashed completely. I had to restore it on a Mac Store -my Windows PC didn't even recognized the damn thing. Now, when i sync music or videos (through Vbox), it starts slow and then the transfer speed is normal, so the thing is... is there any chance of damaging the device's disk, or something, doing things this way? I know it's a silly question, giving all people doing it without any problems, but hey, i live in Argentina and this device is way expensive here and i just don't want to do a n y t h i n g that might harm it.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 26. Mar 2010, 00:50
by liekejo
Wow.. I'm stunned! This issue is so old but I've still experienced it :(
OS: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (beta) & Sun VirtualBox 3.1.4 with a Windows 7 VM.
Latest iTunes 9.0.3.15 and latest iphone firmware (3.1.3)
All that just to sync my iphone :roll:

Anyway, thanks for this tip! It solved my issue.

Re: iPhone syncing problem

Posted: 27. Oct 2010, 00:25
by omegahacker
That was the absolute last thing I expected to work, but it did!

My home button died and I'm looking at being forced to get the 4G, but neither my Windows laptop nor my wife's Mac will actually back up a phone any time this century, so I'm trying VirtualBox...

Has anyone actually figured out what on earth the display resolution has to do with whether a USB device is properly recognized? Strikes me as a strong indication of really poor coding, but whether it's in VirtualBox or (more likely) Windoze itself is obviously in need of investigation.