This computer has been previously synced with an iphone or another IOS device
I’m using iOS 5 beta 5 on my iPhone and I encountered an issue where whenever I plugged my iPhone into iTunes I was prompted to either setup my iPhone as a new device or restore it.
I was still able to do wireless backups so this wasn’t a problem. I did restore of my latest backup. The problem was, even after the restore it still kept brining up the same screen saying “This computer has been previously synced with an iphone or another IOS device.”
Long story short here is how I corrected:
- Plug your phone into iTunes
- Click setup as a new device
- Immediately unplug your phone from the computer
- Give it about 30 seconds and iTunes will give a message (I don’t remember the specific, but regarding you unplugging the device and it not completing)
- Plug your phone back in
- Viola! no restore occurred and you can access everything again
I have my phone setup to wifi sync and I notice this started happening when I unchecked “Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected.” Everything is running good again.
Thank you.
I thought I was going crazy and was the only person dealing with this issue — I couldn’t find anyone out there who even had any idea what I was talking about!
No problem, glad it helped you out.
Thanks! I had the same issue today with the iOS 5 beta. Glad I found this
Thanks for your Help Michael, I was the same, was just soo frustrating I would just charge the phone in the wall and forget about connecting it to itunes.
I have tried this a couple of times with no luck.. Are you on windows? Maybe that’s why I can’t get it to work.. I’m on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2
I’m on Lion as well. 10.7.1 though. As 10.7.2 is the developer build it is possible something is different there. Make sure you don’t unplug the iPhone too soon. It should read “preparing to restore” on the iPhone screen before you disconnect it. As soon as you see that unplug it.
Big help, big help. And suprealitve news of course.
I could kiss you right now. No homo!
Major help. Thank you!
Worked like a charm! Thanks a lot man. This has been driving me crazy. Finally I have my syncing back.
Thank you thank you thank you
You’ve hit the ball out the park! Incderbile!
This is really weird that it’s happened to all of us right around the same time, without doing anything different. I had to do this twice before it would work. I had to wait until it said “preparing to sync” or whatever at the top and then unplugged it. Then I plugged it back in and it’s like normal. Thanks a lot man. I was freaking out thinking I’d have to redownload the whole beta 5 file again to restore it from a backup.
I know everyone has already said it – but thank you … so relieved! Nice one
a clarification:
you don’t immediately unplug it.
make sure you hit continue first, choose the phone name then hit “continue” (or done i think)…THEN unplug it
j.
Mighty useful. Make no msitake, I appreciate it.
This worked! I’ve not been able to back up my phone for over 2 months with this issue, now it seems to be back to normal, THANK YOU
also, THANKS!
Ppl like you get all the brains. I just get to say thanks for he anwesr.
THANK YOU SO MUCH
- had this problem for since beginning of September thought it was bug with iOS 5 betas..but they never got fixed did this and worked
many thanks x
Awesome. Thank you so much for this post!
omg thank you so freaking much i have literaly had this problem ever since i bought my iphone 4. what a life saver.
Thank you!!! THis worked great!
Wow, what a random resolution! I thought I was going to be the only one with this problem — crazy. Thank you so much!!!
Thanks! I upgraded to the official, “publicly released”, versions of iOS 5 and Lion (10.7.2) two days ago and just ran into this issue tonight.
“Setup as a new phone” isn’t something I would have tried. And then brazenly pulling the plug mid-setup? That’s CRAZY talk!!!
Anyway, thanks again.
I’m serious, you’re a genius
Thank you. SO MUCH. This has been bothering me for days on end!
Thank you so much this has happened to me about 3 times now and I am using official iOS 5. Never had the problem on iOS 4. Hopefully apple will sort this problem out. Once again thank you.
hi, this isn’t working for me and I’m thinking I got one of the steps wrong? I thought I did exactly what you said- hit continue and so forth and then immediately unplugged it…. but still no message and when I put it back in same thing just pops up again.
Did you hit the continue button when it asks you to name the phone? Do that, then unplug the phone, it worked for me that way.
Michael – thank you so much for taking the time to figure this out and post the solution
thanks so much for this. we were at a loss how to sort out my girlfriend’s phone and this completely solved the problem!
Thanks for the help! I also would just charge my i-phone in the wall and then it was giving me more problems because I was not receiving the updates the phone needed. Now I am syncing and downloading the latest software to my phone. Thank you so much for this post! All the people at the ATT store are complete morons…they could not help me at all with this issue
And if you call apple support, they want to charge you $199.00 so that they can answer a simple question over the phone!
Brilliant tip!
Worked like a dream for me.
The problem started when I accepted an upgrade from Apple. My confidence is them in not alerting anyone to this problem was dented.
Thanks again
Thanks for the post.
After unsuccessfully trying to solve the same problem for 30 min, this solution worked right away.
nice!
got the same issue today. looked a bit crappy. i was just having my iphone synced over wifi, the sync failed and it ended up like this.
thanks for the tip, worked great!!!
Worked like a dream. Many thanks!
SOOOOOOOOOO thankful for this!! Brilliant! x
I just had this happen to me. Very odd. I’m on 10.7.2 / iOS 5.0.1. I hit to “Set up as a new iPhone” and what do you know, it didn’t seem to set it up as a new phone, never got to a “preparing to restore” screen, it just did a normal sync.
What’s odd is that sync settings were turned off or altered. It had stopped syncing podcasts/movies/TV/photos and it restored apps that I had deleted off of my phone. But nothing was blanked from my phone and after a little work setting back up what it should sync it got syncing again like normal.
I suspect that for me it had something to do with setting up iTunes Match as it had started throwing some errors whenever I synced after starting that, saying it couldn’t sync some number of items because I had iTunes Match turned on. Something got screwed up with the settings and I think it needed a blank slate.
i love u
ok i dont, but this just saved my backside, all my stuff is back as it was a day back….thanks very much
thank you sooooo much!!!! after a whole day of screaming and shouting snd nearly breaking my phone and computer, and giving up on my iphone……my fantastic wife came across this and it has finally restored everything back to the way it was!!!!!thankyou!!!!!!!!you should get a knighthood
Wow! Thank you! I’ve already spent hours on the phone with Apple tech support, to no avail, and then was able to solve this problem within a couple of minutes of reading this! Even one of their senior advisors couldn’t figure out this easy fix. Now to see if my phone will actually let me back it up…
What tha…. omg.. You are my freakin hero!!! Uggh I thought I was screwed and it was never goin to work normally ever again
I am so book marking this page. My sincere thanks!
Thanks so much, brilliant tip. Apple have got quite a few issues wrong lately with bugs on iTunes. In 10.5 with iOS 5 there was ‘waiting for items to copy’ and now with iOS 5.0.1 in iTunes 10.5.1 there is this frustrating issue! Thanks
Thanks for posting this solution. I got the same error as all of you, and I followed Michael’s solution, but I didn’t have to use the “pull out” method to restore normal synchronization.
First, I initiated a backup to iCloud to be sure.
Second, in iTunes, I started to setup my iPhone as a new iPhone. iTunes did not try to restore the phone and it performed a normal sync.
The only thing that happened was that all of my apps on iTunes were restored to my phone, specifically the apps I had disabled when my iPhone battery drain issue began after upgrading to iOS 5.
I know others have said it, but thank you! unfortunately I came accross this page a little late, as I had searched and searched for answers and ended up completely restoring the phone and downloading everyting from an icloud backup, but now I just tried this and it works like a charm! now to sit and wait while everything downloads…
Thank you
Worked for me on iOS 5.0 jailbroken (05.13.04 baseband and new bootrom) Thanks!!!
Thanks! Can’t beleive this ‘beta’ issue was never fixed.
Thank you! I was going nuts and visions of getting a new phone…you saved me. Hopefully others will stumble into this as well. Fixed my iPhone 4!! Happy New Years!
Thank you so much. i haven’t synced my phone in months and thanks to you I can again. You ROCK!
Ah! Thanks so much it ACTUALLY WORKED! So much thanks to you!!!
Thank you soooo much your are a STAR !!!
Thank you so much. I just started getting this message tonight.
Thank you! worked on my iPad