iTunes and iPhone Kill Vista
I've complained about Vista's Data Execution Protection (DEP) feature before, but I wanted to live with it for the benefits it does bring to the table. That is until I got my iPhone. Actually, just having installed the latest iTunes (7.3.0.54) before I had the phone caused me problems if I even selected the iPhone tab from the preferences menu. Fingers crossed, I attached my iPhone and the problems got worse-- much worse. Repeated crashes occurred from AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe and Outlook forced me to disable the add-in before it would run. I excluded AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe from being monitored by Data Execution Prevention and that got me further but then DEP started shutting down other Apple components like MDCrashReportTool.exe and YahooSync.exe (even something called "Test 1 module". I added these and everything else stored in the "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support" folder to the list of applications to be excluded from DEP. That should do it! Or perhaps make things even worse-- yes much worse. Now explorer was crashing on me constantly. I could not even open the control panel to troubleshoot further without explorer crashing!
Finally, I disabled DEP entirely from the command line and rebooted. Since then everything has been fine.
Lesson: iTunes doesn't like DEP on Vista
Obviously not everyone is having this problem, but I remain surprised it was not encountered as an issue during Apple's own testing. Hopefully someone as frustrated as I was can be saved the pain of my entire experience with this tip!
PS: If you find you need to enable the iTunes Outlook Addin after having been forced to disable it as I did. You can find it under Tools > Trust Center. From here, select "Add-ins", select "Disabled Items" from the drop down list at the bottom labeled "Manage" and press the Go… button. From here you should see any disabled Outlook Addins (such as iTunes Outlook Addin) where you may click to enable them once again.
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Comments
I just received an MDCrashReportTool.exe alert from zone labs when I tried to run the iPhone software update. I didn't see anything crash but searching on "MDCrashReportTool.exe " led me here. You were the only hit on google.
MDCRT was trying to access 17.254.3.51 via https protocol. It resolves to iphonesubmissions.apple.com
I run win XP, SP2 with DEP disabled.
Posted by: Martin C | July 3, 2007 9:08 PM
This happened to me so I turned off DEP in the control panel except for Windows services --and even now if I enable calendar sync in iTunes, Vista blue screens reliably.
Though the iPhone packaging says they support Vista, it looks like it's not ready for prime time.
Posted by: Will | July 8, 2007 2:51 AM
I got this crash again on Vista with DEP disabled today. Soon after I got news of a new update to iTunes and installed it. I saw one more crash, rebooted and not crashes since. My fingers remain crossed.
Posted by: Bob Kelly | July 9, 2007 1:33 PM
Will,
If you are getting an actual blue screen you are in worse shape than I was! This would normally point to a driver issue. I'd recommend ensuring you have all updates installed (for Vista and iTunes) and if you still have trouble, you might try using another USB port. Grasping at straws... anyone else seeing a blue screen from Vista?
Posted by: Bob Kelly | July 9, 2007 2:10 PM
Finally! I've found others that are experiencing iPhone corruption of Vista! When I first synced my iphone my computer crashed, and at boot I was notified that RAID was corrupted. Six hours later, I turned off RAID and it seemed to work. However, when I took the phone off the cradle and tried to turn the machine off, the screen went blank, with just a blinking curser in the top left corner. It wouldn't boot. When I turn it on, it goes to the Dell blue screen then to black. I then reinstalled the O/S and all apps and the machine was very, very slow, and would crash occasionally at boot. I then ran disk cleanup, removing the old OS, and defrag, and things were running better. Now iTunes just crashed and I got the MDCRASHREPORTTOOL.EXE notice, saying it wasn't running. I'm afraid my machine will crash yet again. I've invested over 20 hours trying to fix what was a perfectly good computer. My options are to return the phone, or buy an iMac. I see that new ones are coming out in a few weeks, so perhaps if I can make this machine limp along until then I'll just buy a Mac. I realize this is Apples fault, but I'm tired of Windows Vista, and tired of Office 2007 which is an unwieldy mess.
Posted by: Dave Michael | July 13, 2007 3:06 AM
I have the crash problem with Vista, an ASUS baseboard and RAID. The RAID seems to be corrupt when I try to connect my IPod
Posted by: Fabian Escalante | July 20, 2007 1:11 PM
Fabian,
Check the configuration options for your RAID. It could be trying to take your iPod for a hard drive-- most MP3 players and cameras show up on a computer as a removable hard drive. I'd also check with the RAID vendor site-- it is unlikely you are the first to encounter this, even if it is a configuration issue.
Posted by: Bob Kelly | July 24, 2007 9:32 AM
iTunes recognized my iPhone when I was running XP home edition but when I loaded Vista Ultimate (32-bit), iTunes no longer recognizes the iPhone when it is in the cradle. The computer thinks it is a camera. Is this the same problem as the RAID issue previously mentioned? If so, how do I change a RAID option?
Posted by: John Busch | July 26, 2007 9:20 AM