iPhone Digital Camera Driver Issue, iPhone Not Showing Up Under My Computer

Oct 31 2009

iPhone Digital Camera Driver Issue, iPhone Not Showing Up Under My Computer

Posted by alex in Insights at 4:18 PM

I typically transfer images from my iPhone to my Windows XP computer by clicking on My Computer, clicking on the Apple iPhone icon, and then transferring the images to another folder on the computer. Today I plugged in the iPhone via USB to my Windows XP laptop and I was surprised to see that the iPhone Camera was not showing as a drive after clicking on My Computer. To verify I hadn’t made a configuration change on accident that was causing this to not show up I verified that the computer was not seeing the iPhone’s camera by opening up Control Panel and clicking on Scanners and Cameras.

**UPDATE: The first solution is what worked for me but there have been some comments confirming that the below will not solve everyones issue. Another solution to try is to delete any images you have saved to the Camera Roll from email. It appears in some situations if images are saved from emails that it is causing issues with the digital camera driver and you will be unable to retrieve images from the iPhone if you have saved images you received via email. I attempted to duplicate the issue with emailed gif’s and emailed jpg’s but I was unable to though I am sure this issue exists for others as it has already been confirmed at least twice in the comments below.

iPhone Not Showing Under My Computer:

Everything else did seem to be working fine with the iPhone’s USB driver on my computer. I was able to charge the iPhone, backup the iPhone, and sync the iPhone to iTunes. I don’t believe the driver had been updated recently though I am not sure that it wasn’t. Below are instructions on how to resolve this issue by removing the Apple Mobile Device USB Driver which is used by the iPhone and letting it reinstall itself.

Reinstall Apple Mobile Device USB Driver:

Attach iPhone Via USB:Make sure the iPhone is attached to the computer via the USB cable. Wait to proceed with the steps below until the iPhone has completed backing up and syncing to iTunes.
Open Device Manager: Right click on My Computer and select Properties from the drop down menu. This will open System Properties as shown below. System Properties opens on the General tab so you will need to click on the Hardware tab which is the active tab in the image below.

Click the Device Manager button to open the Device Manager as shown below.
Remove iPhone USB Driver:As you can see in the above image the iPhone USB drive is actually called Apple Mobile Device USB Driver. We want to remove this driver by expanding the list of USB drivers which can be done by clicking the + next to Universal Serial Bus controllers. This is already done in the image above but I wanted to mention in case you were unfamiliar with the Device Manager. Now right click on Apple Mobile Device USB Driver and select Uninstall from the drop down menu. A confirmation like the one shown in the below image will require you confirm you want to remove the iPhone USB driver.Click the OK button on the pop up confirmation window as shown below which will remove the driver.
Reinstall iPhone Driver:Once the driver has been removed you should unplug the iPhone from the USB cable. To reinstall the iPhone USB driver plug it back into the USB cable and the reinstalling of the driver will start automatically. There will be numerous pop up messages displayed near the system clock in the lower right corner of your Windows XP desktop. Once you see the pop up message confirming that your new device is ready to use everything should be working properly again.
Verify iPhone Camera Detected: Open My Computer now to verify that the iPhone is displayed and you can click on it as you previously were able to do. The below image shows the iPhone Camera icon displaying underneath My Computer.

Another way you can verify the driver is reinstalled properly is to open Device Manager and expand Imaging Devices. You should now see “Apple iPhone” displayed again as shown in the below image.

You can now go back to transferring images to and from your iPhone.

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More Questions? --> Ask --> Read --> Answer --> Gain --> Engage!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 4:18 PM and is filed under Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

51 Responses to “iPhone Digital Camera Driver Issue, iPhone Not Showing Up Under My Computer”

ohmpp says:

January 16, 2010 at 4:26 AM

thanks

ohm

[Reply]
alex Reply:
January 17th, 2010 at 12:25 AM
Hello ohmpp,

No problem. I assume your iPhone is now showing again underneath My Computer… Good to hear it.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
ks Reply:
January 31st, 2010 at 5:12 PM
Hi mate,

great article, having this exact problem. however when i go to unistall the iphone, ‘device’ at the ‘confirm device removal’ window, i click okay and nothing happens, the okay is indented and the sand timer comes up and it does nothing for ages.
help!!
please.

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 10:03 AM
Hello ks,

As you noted before the issue with your iPhone not being seen properly by Windows is more than likely images that have been saved to your camera roll. I hope you were able to work through these issues and sync photos with your Windows computer from your iPhone.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Roguesniper747 Reply:
February 18th, 2010 at 9:46 AM
I have dont all this to try an fix it the phone shows up thats it i get a code 28 for the camera roll.ANyone know how to fix this ?

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 19th, 2010 at 9:30 PM
Hello Roguesniper747,

I have not seen that specific error. I would suggest trying to uninstall the driver, delete all images on the phone, and then see if the driver reinstalls on your computer during the next connection.

Hope that helps.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
ks says:

January 31, 2010 at 5:21 PM

awww man, having read previous comments i have the same problem, i.e. saved photos on camera roll.

i normally save images from safari to my camera roll so i can use as background images or just keep good photos i find.

i have 200 of these aforementioned photos, and theres no chance im going to delete them all to get my phone recognised by my computer. :(

hopefully they fix this bug.

thanks for this site and comments posted.

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 10:02 AM
Hello ks,

Did removing the photos from your iPhone resolve the issue or did you decide to just not remove them? Would love to hear the results and what you did to resolve the issue.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Syd says:

February 22, 2010 at 7:41 AM

THIS IS THE ONLY WEBSITE THAT SOLVED MY PROBLEM…… IT WORKED WHEN I DELETED PHOTOS I DOWNLOADED FROM WEB AND FROM EMAIL…
THANKS FOR YOU…………
SYD

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:45 AM
Hello Syd,

No problem. That is great to hear! Yeah it was more than likely a size or format of images that the camera roll couldn’t process properly for some reason. I am surprised that this has been a bug so long for the iPhone OS, Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback. We hope you will visit our site again in the future.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Syd Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:27 AM
No prob… anytime…
I also retweeted your post, as yet i is a recurring issue and every time it is a new problem…
Thanks;
Syd

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:06 AM
Hello Syd,

Thanks a bunch.

If you have any other technical questions or want to look at answering other peoples questions we have recently launched a new portion of our site called Engage. It allows users to sign in and ask or answer any types of technical questions.

Thanks again.
alex

[Reply]
Arin says:

February 22, 2010 at 4:26 PM

I’ve tried both these suggestions and still cannot get it to work. iTunes syncs with my phone but I can’t see it in my computer. In device manager I have the yellow exclamation point code 10 for the digital still camera driver. Has anyone seen this problem and fixed it?

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:09 PM
Hello Arin,

Sorry to hear you are having issues. What operating system are you using? What version iPhone do you have? What firmware is it running? Also what version of iTunes is installed?

I would recommend completely removing the iphone device drivers from your computer. Then make sure that you have the latest iTunes and other Apple software installed before plugging the iPhone back into the USB port. You may also try a different USB port. I have seen in the past where one USB port will work but the other won’t. If all of this fails answer the questions above and it may trigger more suggestions.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Arin Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:35 PM
Hi Alex,

I have the 32g 3GS running 3.1.2 with iTunes 9.0.3.15.

I have Vista on my laptop.

I just tried a different USB slot and still no success. It installs the Apple Device Manager fine but the Digital Still Camera does not install successfully.

If I can’t get it to work I’ll just email them to myself like I did before I deleted everything to try this solution until I can fix it.

Thanks for all your help!

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:03 PM
Hello Arin,

I only have a Windows 7 computer right in front of my and when I watch Device Manager and plug in the iPhone via USB it only shows the Apple Mobile Device USB Driver. I don’t mean to run in circles here but you have actually right clicked on that in Device Manager and selected “uninstall” from the drop down menu? I did at one point have a similar issue which wasn’t either of the items noted in this article where I had to forcefully uninstall the iPhone device driver and reinstall every piece of apple software and it did resolve my problem. The only thing I can’t say for sure is if I was getting “code 10″ or not…

Anyhow without being able to reproduce I don’t think i am going to be a lot of help specifically since I don’t have Vista right in front of me either. I would love to hear what does resolve the issue though.

Good luck…

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Arin Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:15 PM
Hi Alex,

I have fixed the problem. I had my husband bring home his laptop and I compared our drivers. We have identical laptops. I noticed that under his Portable Devices (in Device Manager) his iPhone was listed as Apple iPhone where mine said Digital Still Camera. I compared our drivers and saw that mine had something listed about LibUSB-win32 something. I also found that in my program files. I uninstalled the LibUSB, plugged up my iPhone and instantly it installed the correct driver.

I have no idea where this other file came from but at least now it works!

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:22 PM
Hello Arin,

You are the best. Thanks so much for posting a follow up as not only was I curious what the issue was but I am guessing that someone else will run into the same problem and now if they end up on Question Defense they will be able to locate the answer in the comments.

So LibUSB-Win32 is a port of libusb to the Windows operating system and libusb is an open source application initially developed for Linux I believe but the native libusb now works across Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin, MacOS X, and of course Windows with LibUSB-Win32. The goal of the project is to make any USB device work across any operating system without issue. It is a really great idea and hopefully the development continues to advance however as we can see in your case it had the opposite effect.

Anyhow thanks again Arin. I am really glad you got your iPhone camera working with your Windows computer. .

Thanks.
alex
vihann says:

February 23, 2010 at 3:25 PM

Thank you very much! Once i deleted all the photo’s i copied from the web it worked!

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:37 PM
Hello vihann,

No problen at all. I am really glad to hear that you were able to see your iPhone properly from Windows after removing the images copied from the Internet. I assume the issue must be that the Windows iPhone driver must freak out because the image format is different than the format that the iPhone itself takes the images in and thus different than what the iPhone driver is expecting. We appreciate you taking the time to leave feedback.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
RAWOLFE says:

February 25, 2010 at 7:33 PM

Thank you SOOOO much for posting this. I was skeptical that it could be the pictures in the camera roll, but after trying ALL other fixes and after 5 hours of working on it, I turned to this as a last resort. Low and behold, it WORKS! Thank you so much! :)

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 11:43 PM
Hello RAWOLFE,

No problem at all. My initial problem was resolved by reinstalling the Apple Mobile Device Driver however others continued to respond saying that did not resolve their issue. Eventually a user by the name of Morb posted a response stating that he had removed images from the camera roll and this resolved his issue. At first I assumed it was a unique issue but after a couple weeks I had saved some images from email onto my iPhone so I could edit them quickly and send them back to someone. Sure enough a day later I was charging my iPhone and the iPhone no longer displayed underneath My Computer. I removed the images I had saved from email onto the iPhone Camera Roll and the iPhone device started showing again underneath My Computer. After looking at some articles I had written previously, including this article about opening iPhone PNG images in Windows, I am pretty sure the issue is related to the images not being converted properly and Windows or the iPhone discovering this as some other type of error when attempting to display the iPhone as a drive underneath Windows. Anyhow probably more information that you needed or wanted but I thought I would share for anyone else that is interested.

Thanks again for taking the time to leave feedback and letting others know that the images saved from email, MMS messages, or other web sites on the Internet onto the iPhone Camera Roll can definitely be the problem.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
ron says:

March 8, 2010 at 7:48 PM

thanks a lot. mine worked and my problem solved !!!

[Reply]
alex Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 11:17 PM
Hello ron,

Good to hear! We are always glad to hear when articles we have posted, which in this case relates to the iPhone digital camera drivers, help resolve issues! Thanks so much for taking the time to leave feedback.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Rahil says:

March 11, 2010 at 4:24 AM

Hey…

Even I had the same problem with my iPhone 3g 3.1.2. I uded to install many applications through appstore and cydia. And suddenly My phone could not get detected on my PC. I was so worried and started searchin on google everywhere…And thank God I found you….I’d tried everything before uninstalling and installing the driver, the same with iTunes and what not….nut your trick worked…

I deleted all the downloaded pics from the sites and safari…and finally it got appeared on my PC…I thank you very much….I’m leaving comment very first time in my life on any site…but I think you deserve much more than this….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[I wanna share one thing as well which I faced....if your iPhone does not get detected by itunes...please try on some another computer right away rather than getting panic or trying messing up with an iPhone...I'm sure it's almost USB probs of different computeres...]

Thanks!

Rahil

[Reply]