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Apple iPhone won’t display in Vista’s Windows Explorer

A quick post that may help a few people whose iPhone has suddenly disappeared from Windows Explorer. I use Vista Ultimate but I suggest this technique will work for XP and other Vista variants as well. Normally the iPhone appears like a camera to Windows Vista (albeit with a cute iPhone icon) which allows access to the phone’s Camera Roll.

I went looking to pull the photos off my iPhone this morning only to discover that it wasn’t showing up in Windows Explorer as a device anymore. Quite certain it worked at one point but what can you do.

The drivers that make the iPhone appear as a USB device are usbaapl.sys and usbaaplrc.dll. If your installing you should look for usbaapl.inf which is in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers. More about this later.

Connect your iPhone by USB, then open Windows Device Manager (right-click My Computer and select Manage). You may find your iPhone under “Universal Serial Bus Controllers”, where mine was, or possibly under “Portable Devices”. At any rate if your phone can sync with iTunes it will be in there somewhere. It should be called Apple Mobile Device USB Driver or something like that. When you find it, right-click and select “Uninstall” but don’t remove the files from the PC. There’s nothing wrong with the files (probably) it’s just the device registration that has become cactus.

Once uninstalled disconnect the device and reconnect again. After a minute you should see the device registered correctly, iTunes fires up and Windows Explorer shows your iPhone as a camera again. Job done.

My driver files were already in Windows\System32 directory cause that’s where drivers go, but the original files that ship from Apple can usually be found at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support. If you deleted the files in the uninstall step when you shouldn’t have you can likely find them there, otherwise I would re-install iTunes cause I would guess they ship with the iTunes software though I can’t confirm that.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 11:46 am and is filed under General. 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.

View Comments (28)

28 Responses to “Apple iPhone won’t display in Vista’s Windows Explorer”

ax - May 24th, 2009 at 1:20 pm

i also lose my iphone in explorer, and i try your method, but it still not come back. after it reconnect, it also be recognize as apple mobile device, all things is ok, but only can not display in explorer.
Richard - September 17th, 2009 at 12:37 am

@ax
Unfortunately without extensive troubleshooting it will be quite hard to determine what to do next, I can only really suggest Googling until you find someone with an alternate method to that above that works for you.
Keith - September 27th, 2009 at 8:34 am

Worked great, thanks.
Simon - October 7th, 2009 at 8:19 pm

Worked for me too… many thanks
Roy Trzeciak-Hicks - October 10th, 2009 at 5:09 am

I had the same problem this did not fix it, i had to delete the drivers and let it reinstall them too.
Tony - October 24th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

Tick the wee box to delete the drivers – unplug phone then re-connect phone it will install the new drivers from the common file directory and will now show the iphone
Oremetro - November 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

Ive also facing the same problem.Thought the issue solved after I change from Windows Vista 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit,but it didnt.It seem my Apple mobile device USB driver is not functioning well either conflicts with the windows 64 bit.I can find the driver under the Universal Serial Bus controller,try to uninstall it while iphone still connecting to the PC, and the uninstalling process never end.
Unplug the iphone and then can be uninstalled.Plug it again, the Apple mobile device USB driver been installed to the same directory.Till now i dont know how to make it detected in itunes.Please someone help me
Isabel - December 18th, 2009 at 2:22 am

I uninstalled both the device not found (yellow question mark in device manager) and the USB Apple iphone device..did the trick..thanks for guiding us on the solution path..
phyl - December 28th, 2009 at 5:54 am

Thank you for the quick fix.Not sure what caused the issue because vista updates are auto and there has been several updates on the iphone software since the last time i wanted to download photos.I wish there was an easier way to archive the photos.
Naveen - December 31st, 2009 at 1:03 pm

I am really glad I found this blog!! I have vista 64 bit home premium and I was not able to see my iphone in explorer.

All I had to do to get it work is follow the steps above, explicitly delete existing driver files by checking the ‘delete drivers files..’ checkbox and voila!!! I am now able to see my Iphone. Thank you so much!!
Craig - January 11th, 2010 at 8:36 am

I just upgraded to Windows 7 (64 Bit).

I followed the instructions above but my iPhone didn’t show until I followed Tony’s instuctions above

This worked for me.
Craig - January 11th, 2010 at 6:48 pm

Please ignore my earlier post.

DONT: Tick the wee box to delete the drivers

My iPhone stopped syncing with iTunes, so I have had to reinstall iTunes.
PompeyRob - January 12th, 2010 at 9:32 am

You may not need to uninstall anything as a first step just disable and then re-enable the Apple Mobile Device driver in device manager. Hey presto the iPhone appears in Explorer again.
felix page - January 16th, 2010 at 10:25 am

FIXED IT!!!!! There has to be at least one photo in the Camera Roll in order for it to be recognized. take a photo and when you plug it back it it should work.
dck - February 1st, 2010 at 8:07 am

In most of the cases where devices don’t show up, users might want to check whether the respective drivers are set to “full control” in the drivers’ properties/security tab.

Every time I encounter a missing device, the respective driver of my Vista 32 laptop has no “full control” permission for the normal user mode. My normal user mode allows for “read&execute” and “read” only, which apparently is less than what the device needs to perform properly.

Setting the drivers’ permissions to “full control” makes the devices show up in Vista explorer at once.
Tina - February 8th, 2010 at 11:46 am

If you have a passcode lock on your phone then windows explorer will not recognise it. For it to show in MY COMPUTER you have to have the passcode lock turned off.
Johan - February 9th, 2010 at 1:07 am

Thanks. This helped my “Apple iPhone\Internal Storage” to reappear as a device in explorer on Windows Vista Business 32-bit.
pushpinder bagga - February 13th, 2010 at 1:11 am

ditto – there has to be at least one photo in the Camera Roll in order for it to be recognized
gbby - February 19th, 2010 at 5:19 am

Vista sucks. Apple sucks. That said, email then delete any pictures that weren’t taken by the camera on the phone. I had the same problem with the uninstall never ending, and this was the only thing that worked. Back to normal now…
blaise - March 1st, 2010 at 10:49 am

i love all of you!!!!

btw, it was reply #14 that did it for me, haha
Diego Varela Rodriguez - March 9th, 2010 at 10:14 pm

This trick still hasn’t brought my iPhone back to the WIN 7 Explorer. And i tried everything! Even went to Apple Support page, and there’s nothing wrong with my USB Drivers! iTunes syncs perfectly, and i have the latest version of the Apple iPhone Mobile Device Drivers.

Help Me Please, I Beg You All, SOS!
Diego Varela Rodriguez - March 9th, 2010 at 10:23 pm

@ “felix page”, YESSS, Thanks a Lot! Your Trick Worked!

The only thing that this Blogger forgot to mention after uninstalling the Apple Mobile USB Device Driver and plug the iPhone back on, is the trick that “felix page” described:

‘There has to be at least one photo in the Camera Roll in order for it to be recognized. take a photo and when you plug it back it it should work.’

Sometimes, such stupid small things make people go Crazy, really. Somebody has just made my day today, THANKS A LOT!

Grtz, and Thanks Again, Diego Varela Rodriguez
Shawn - March 25th, 2010 at 1:43 pm

Worked like a champ, thank you!!!!
Brad B - April 3rd, 2010 at 3:56 am

Life saver, followed these steps (fyi I’m on XP pro), iPhone connected initially
1.Looked at properties of the Driver in Device Manager (Run\devmgmt.msc) under ‘Universal Serial Bus controllers’
2.Looked for the location of the drivers in the Driver details. ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\usbaaplrc.dll’ & ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\usbaapl.sys’
3.Renamed the Drivers (put a z at front of name) just in case
4.Disconnected the iPhone
5.Uninstalled the drivers
6.Reconnected the iPhone
7.Received a message suggesting there was an issue, ignored it
8.Wait a few minutes……..nail biter
9.Received the New Camera dialogue box and say my iPhone in Windows Explorer
10.Further nail biting as launched iTunes to see if could still see iPhone
11.Success, so far so good
Rex - May 23rd, 2010 at 1:49 am

Thanks very much,I finaly find my iphone back.
Nyrelle - May 25th, 2010 at 8:17 pm

Thank you! This was the perfect fix.
Chris - June 13th, 2010 at 11:54 am

FIXED IT with Tina’s #16 !

I tried all the other suggestions, but in my case I had the iPhone passcode turned on. That seemed to prevent Explorer from being able to recognize it. Turned off the passcode and now it sees it just fine.

Seems same symptom is caused by various problems.
Shane - June 27th, 2010 at 7:46 pm

It worked for me, Thank you!!

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