[iCol]

Hello all,

Wondering if anyone has come across this problem before, and knows how to get around it:

I have just connected my iPhone to my Mac for the first time in a few weeks to sync some new music with it, and it is opening iTunes as expected - however, it is coming up with a dialogue saying "An iPhone has previously been synced with this computer" and wants me to either set the unit up as a new iPhone, or restore it from a recent backup.

So, what I can gather from this is that iTunes can't see that it IS the iPhone that was previously synced with this computer. The problem is, the most recent backup was from about a month ago, and I don't want to lose all the text messages and photos I have received/taken over the past few weeks.

Does anyone know how this can be resolved? The only other thing to mention would be that iTunes is tagging my iPhone by the name I gave it, it isn't simply appearing in the devices list as 'iPhone'.

Any suggestions gratefully received,

Colin

[justinsail]

I'm furiously looking for a solution to this and yours is the closest post to anyone I've found with this problem. Did you ever fix it? Or did you give up and restore, losing data in the process?

Currently I'm experimenting with using something like PocketMac for iPhone to offload some of my data before i erase it. the other thing I'm thinking is that it might be fixable directory corruption but I don't know of any utilities that can access and repair the iPhone's directory. anyone?

Such a bummer, why can't I force it to back up first?

[justinsail]

PS: I already tried to reset Apple Mobile Device support by following this article:
iPhone and iPod touch: How to remove and reinstall the Apple Mobile Device Service on Mac OS X

no dice.

[all2ofme]

If I've understood correctly you want to get your current iPhone working with:

- new music
- your new AND your old SMSs
- your new AND your old photos (taken with the iPhone rather than synced)

I did something similar (though not identical) recently after futzing around with the instructions here:
[Problem] Advanced sms backup issue - Hackint0sh

General gist is probably something like this:
- transfer the photos to your Mac and sync them back to the phone (only downside being they'll be in Photo Library rather than Camera Roll)
- replace the SMS data bundle (and a few others that tie them to your new device's ID) in your old backup with the ones from your new backup.
- restore from that backup and keep your fingers crossed.

It took a while, but I worked it out eventually. I'll check back here occasionally to see how you're getting on, but hopefully this'll help! The difference seems to be that you want to keep the old backup's messages AND the ones you've received since. I was happy with just the former.

Good luck - just stay patient
Ben

[ghporter]

Well I'm happy to say that my own issue with this came out much more easily and smoothly than those above. Today I plugged my iPhone 3Gs in to sync it and it was not recognized as my phone. I restarted my phone and my computer. I reSET my phone. I reinstalled iTunes. Then I gave up and just let iTunes restore from my backup (which had been done just before I had the issue). It took a few minutes, but all is well and my phone "looks like" my phone to iTunes once again.