Windows 10 – iPhone 12 – iTunes – iCloud

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My service provider informed me I had to get a new phone & retire my old (and much preferred) flip phone which would no longer work as of March 2022. I was looking for the smallest phone I could find and consequently ended up with an iPhone 12 mini. This is my first experience with anything Apple or the Cloud – I backup my Win 10 laptop to an external drive.

I downloaded iTunes to my PC so I could back up the iPhone to my computer and also to my external drive. iTunes does not recognize my iPhone. For the record, I used an Apple approved lightning to USB cable to connect both devices.

As usual, I consulted Woody’s Dummies book and learned that, as a Windows program, iTunes leaves much to be desired. I don’t need it to play music – just to backup my iPhone to Win10. I looked up some troubleshooting tips. Disconnected devices, restarted, reconnected. It appears I do not have the iOS drivers that I need. I uninstalled iTunes and did my first phone backup to iCloud. Looking further, I came across the CopyTrans Drivers Installer as a way to install the drivers before I reinstall iTunes.  Does anyone have any feedback on going this route? Thanks.

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If you used the official Apple lightening cable it should have found the phone.  Even without the itunes software when you plug the cable in does it find the device?  You may need to try a different usb slot (one in the back?).

These days I just back up the device to icloud rather than the desktop itunes so I don’t have to deal with the software.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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When you connect the iPhone to your PC you Windows should recognize the device, install a driver and you should see the iPhone as a new storage device.
In order to recognize the iPhone it should be unlocked !

I backup my iPhone to iCloud using build-in backup and to my PC using iTunes.

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ps. Don’t download iTunes from Microsoft Store.
Download and then install directly from Apple.

https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win64 (latest version iTunes 12.11.3 17 x64)

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Please make sure you use synchronisation cable (there are also cables, that allow onlz charging the battery), cable from the phone package is OK.
Also after connecting the phone, make sure you unlock the phone and allow the phone to “trust” your PC – the question will popup when phone is unlocked.

If still nothing happens, go to the device manager and see, if there is your phone displayed. Maybe there is small exclamation mark, which means the driver is missing or malfunctioning.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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Thank you, everyone, for your responses. Windows (my laptop) recognized my iPhone but iTunes did not. When I launched iTunes and connected my iPhone, I was not seeing the iPhone button near the top left of the iTunes window. My iPhone was unlocked during this process and I had downloaded and installed iTunes directly from Apple.

While typing this, it occurred to me that I had downloaded iTunes with my metered connection on. On the chance that this could have affected the download, I turned metered connection off and again downloaded & installed iTunes.  Everything works now. Not sure if this was the reason, but it works!

Thanks again!

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Alex5723

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