Question Windows 10 computer doesn't recognize iPhone as external drive

[babb]

I have an iPhone7 version 12.2 and a Windows 10 computer. When the iPhone was new, I could connect the phone to my computer via USB and view the photos on my phone using Windows and copy photos from the phone without any issues. Now there are two fairly consistent problems:

1. Lengthy delay (often 5 to 20 minutes) after connecting the phone via USB before the DCIM folder shows up in Explorer - and sometimes it never shows up.
   
   
2. If the DCIM folder does show up and I start copying files, the copy process abruptly stops at arbitrary times prior to it completing.

I tried changing USB cables and that did nothing.

I tried uninstalling the driver for the Apple external device and reinstalling it. That did nothing.

I contacted Apple technical support and neither the initial rep or a senior rep had either encountered such an issue or were knowledgeable enough to fix this.

I'm thinking there is a bug/virus/worm in the iPhone.

Perhaps someone in here has encountered this and/or has an idea how to fix this problem.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

It’s most likely your pc. Try the phone on another pc

That doesn’t work reset your phone to factory

 

[babb]

It’s most likely your pc. Try the phone on another pc

That doesn’t work reset your phone to factory

Thanks for the tip - it is the computer! I tried it with one of my old desktops and it worked fine. Given the other problems with Apple, I never suspected the problem would be the Windows computer. Now the question is what is wrong with my Windows 10 computer such that the problem only manifests itself when attempting to read an iPhone and copy files form the iPhone?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

so, there a time this worked on your PC, and if you have System restore, you could try restoring it to an earlier time. but this can cause updating problems later on, even if it does manage to work. there are other more drastic options, but I would recommend backing up all of your data and verifying said backups, and doing a Clean install following that guide to a T, then reinstall your apps and restore your data and the phone should be fine and dandy. I don't like finding needles in haystacks, and at 8 minutes to install Windows 10 clean from a USB stick it just isn't worth it to me.

if a Clean install doesn't work for you, you have hardware issues and have effectively ruled out software configuration issues of all kinds and proven it a hardware failure somewhere

 

[babb]

so, there a time this worked on your PC, and if you have System restore, you could try restoring it to an earlier time. but this can cause updating problems later on, even if it does manage to work. there are other more drastic options, but I would recommend backing up all of your data and verifying said backups, and doing a Clean install following that guide to a T, then reinstall your apps and restore your data and the phone should be fine and dandy. I don't like finding needles in haystacks, and at 8 minutes to install Windows 10 clean from a USB stick it just isn't worth it to me.

if a Clean install doesn't work for you, you have hardware issues and have effectively ruled out software configuration issues of all kinds and proven it a hardware failure somewhere

I'd rather not go to that extreme of a fix right now. I'd like to wait and see if anyone else has ever encountered such a problem and find out what their fix was - and try that. In the meantime, perhaps you or someone else in here can speculate on what it might be.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I encountered that problem and that was my fix... lol, but my laptop was new and the wifi was not reliable either so I knew it had issues out of the box.

you could try an os reset, keeping all your data.