Your iPad/iPhone/iPod not showing up on wireless sync on iTunes in Windows XP?

UPDATE: This solution appears to work for Windows 7 as well. As the problem is likely in the Apple software, the solution should work across Windows operating systems.

Last year for my mom's birthday, we bought her an iPad 2. When iOS 5 came out, she took advantage of the cool wireless sync feature to iTunes running on her Windows XP machine. It worked great for a few months, but then suddenly her iPad stopped showing up in the sync list unless it was physically plugged into her computer. On the iPad, it said it couldn't see her computer.

After tweaking some settings and doing a few reboots, I managed to get her computer to start wireless sync'ing again. I had an idea about what it was, but I wasn't sure.

Then, after a few weeks, I hear from her that it has started again. So I did a little more searching, and after combining multiple people's error reports and extracting the common thing that seemed to fix them all, I think I came up with the fix. It's a simple fix, and she's able to do it herself whenever the iPad loses connectivity. For the last few weeks, every time the iPad stops talking to her computer, she's able to recover immediately. So I think we've figured it out.

The fix? Restart the Apple Mobile Device service. Here's how:

1. Quit iTunes.
2. Right-click on "My Computer" and go to "Manage".
   • Alternatively (e.g., on Windows 7), open up your "Control Panel". Then click to see "All Items." Then look for "Administrative Tools." You should find "Services" in there. That's the ultimate destination we're heading to.
   • Alternatively, click on "Start" and then "Run" and type "services.msc" (without the quotes) and hit enter.
3. Click on "Services and Applications" inside the "Computer Management" console.
4. Double-click on the "Services" that shows up.
5. Find the "Apple Mobile Device" service in the list and select it by clicking on it.
6. Click the link that says "Restart the service".
   • Alternatively, you can right-click on the service and select "Restart."
   • Alternatively, you can double-click on the service and then click the "Stop" button and then the "Start" button.
7. Close the management console.

Now that you've restarted the "Apple Mobile Device", your system should start working like normal again (you may want to start up iTunes again though). Eventually when your iOS device starts looking again, it will find your system and sync as needed.

This problem appears to be caused by some sort of race condition dealing with the Apple Mobile Device and the network. As the computer starts, the order in which things start is non-deterministic. Due to some random delays, the network may not come up quick enough. Consequently, the Apple Mobile Device gets confused by the network being in this state. Re-starting it manually later when the network is definitely up and running seems to fix this problem every time.

Thanks, Microsoft, for SP3. I was getting tired of being happy.

UPDATE (THE FIX!!!): I decided to search Google again, and I found that several days after my support request, a new Microsoft support article (KB951830) was posted that describes the SAME problem as the old one (KB951446). However, in the new one, a HOTFIX is given. Strangely enough, that hotfix is NOT being distributed via Windows Update, and so you'll have to manually download and install it. I have informed the Microsoft support engineers (I've racked up two of them by now) about all of this.

NOTE: It might be important to note that before applying this patch, on the advice of the Microsoft support staff, I removed all registry keys that started with "$%&'()*+." (without the quotes). Evidently these keys are created by the SP3 install, but McAfee (which I was unable to disable due to network policy) wouldn't allow it. There were HUNDREDS of these keys (in each HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet*) and I had to delete them in SAFE MODE (to disable McAfee).

I also was asked to remove the keys (wordwrapped here):

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_CCPROXY
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_LIVEUPDATE_NOTICE_EX
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_LIVEUPDATE_NOTICE_SERVICE
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_LIVEUPDATE_NOTICE

None of those keys existed on my system.

UPDATE: After weeks of back and forth between me and Microsoft support, I'm finally in touch with an "Escalation Engineer" who is trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

Every morning, I'm still manually restarting my SharedAccess service after reconnecting my laptop. Otherwise, the Windows firewall blocks my access to the DNS running on the gateway. However, every other service gets through fine. That is, if I hard-coded my laptop's DNS, I think everything would be fine.

IF this problem is not a universal bug in SP3, it's something that was caused by installing SP3 with McAfee turned on (I can't turn it off due to network policy).

The Escalation Engineer seems to think that the problem might be fixed by installing a third party unsupported VBS script from some random blog by some Microsoft "MVP", but as far as I can tell, that fix prevents rebooting when SP3 is installed on some AMD systems. My system is an Intel Xeon system, and so I don't think it will make a difference. In fact, if I run it, it tells me that I don't need to run it because I'm on an Intel system. That's a good thing, because otherwise I'd have to uninstall SP3 and then run it. I would have been PISSED if the Escalation Engineer told me to uninstall SP3 and run the script just to find out that I had an Intel machine and the fix had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Hopefully a hotfix is coming soon...

What a stupid fucking bug (KB951446) posted on May 6 with no indication that it will ever be fixed.

So, if you have a single computer (e.g., a laptop) connected to your ICS machine via a crossover cable, every time you disconnect that single computer, your ICS is going to die. The next time you reconnect, you have to restart the ICS service MANUALLY.

Remember that scene in High Fidelity where Rob explains to Barry that he just wants noise on in the background that he can ignore? That's the way I feel about Windows. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it. I just have to have it for a few tedious things, and so I'd like it to sit back and do its thing without getting in my way. Right when I start forgetting that it's there, Microsoft goes ahead and does something to remind me it's still around. It's like some disease that just won't go away.

I've also heard a rumor that XP3's ICS restricts you to sharing your connection with no more than 10 other computers. That's pretty dumb too.