Many iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Windows users are reporting that they have been receiving an error message saying “A device attached to the system is not functioning” (see the image below).
This error message occurs because your computer is not properly communicating with your iOS device. This could be because of many reasons, for example:
- Your iPhone or iPad is not connected to your computer properly
- Your computer’s USB port may not be working
- Your USB cable may not be working
You may see this error when you attempt to copy and transfer photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad to your Windows PC. This short article explains what you can do to fix this problem.
See also: Easiest Way To Open / Edit a .Pages File On a Windows PC
- Reconnect your iPhone to iPad to your computer. Try a different USB port. Try a different USB cable.
- Restart your computer and your iOS device. You can turn off your iOS device by going to Settings > General > Shut Down. Then you can restart. Restart your PC also.
- On your iOS device, go to Settings > Photos and scroll down, find the “transfer to Mac or pc” section. And select “Keep Originals”.
- On your computer, switch between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports.
- Update iTunes to the latest version on your PC. There are two ways to do this depending on your initial installation. If you downloaded iTunes from Apple’s web site, in iTunes, choose Help > Check for Updates. If you downloaded iTunes from Microsoft Store, on your computer, go to Start > Microsoft Store > More… > Download and Updates.
See also: How To Transfer Photos & Videos From iPhone & iPad To Computer (Mac or Windows)
I did the “keep originals”… ya, its fixed.. but now my PC says “cant open HEIC”….
Keep originals worked for me! Also did the back of comp USB port. Thank you 🙏
This is happening to me with iphone 7 and windows 7 (i think its 7 its old!) pictures are transferring no problem but videos wont transfer or they do but then only open as audio files. has anyone found a solution other than changing the settings to most compatible and keep originals as ive done both and its still not working for videos.
Any suggestions or help welcome as i need to be able to take videos off my phone to stop it becoming full and i dont want to have to just delete them as i want to keep the majority of them. This is so annoying that they have changed something which is now preventing us from being able to use or view our own videos and media on other devices!! it always worked fine before!!
very very annoying and life is busy enough without having to try to work out stupid tech issues!
Help!!
Change the settings to Keep original as noted above
used windows “Photos” app and click import from USB device
could also be because you don’t have the right codecs to play back the video files on your computer
download vlcplayer and try again
ok my pictures will tranfer without the change to “keep originals” but not video. so i clicked keep originals and a video transferred but when i go to play the video in media player it says “network is too busy to play file at original quality”.
Keep Originals will work if you don’t mind getting all your photos in HEIC which is hot garbage on a Windows machine. Really what should happen is that Apple should fix its realtime conversion because that’s what’s broken.
Thanks!! ‘Keep originals’ solution works great!!
Hi
I got an Iphone 8 Plus and I ve been trying desperately to transfer all the videos/pictures ( around 39GB ) to my Windows 7 on my laptop . Via Itunes, it seems that it transferred only 36 GB to the PC and when I do it manually (copy paste ) the DCIM folder or even individually each folder ( 100APPLE, 101APPLE etc etc ), it copies only some of the files but not completely. PLEASE tell me what I am doing wrong as I need to backup all the media and the video recordings to the laptop as I need to sell the phone asap.
Thank you
i was able to transfer some by individually selecting each data type at a time, its a pain the ass but i have too many photos to take a risk of not getting them on my PC WITHOUT hours on hours of research.
I’m having this issue with video downloads. I can pull the .jpg’s with no real issue. Virtually all of my videos fail when trying to pull from my iPhone 8 256GB to my Win 7 PC. Will try on my Win 10 and see how that goes….
THANKS YOU DUDE!!! ‘Keep originals’ solution works like a charm!
Keep Originals worked for me. Thanks, this was so frustrating with such a simple fix.
Amazing thank you so much! You have saved me putting my iPhone in the bin!!!!
This first comment about running settings>photos>transfer to mac or pc>keep originals did the trick. TRY THIS FIRST. So frustrating, I tried all the other suggestions by my own intuition before I hit this site. Thank you!
Worked like a charm when you check ‘keep originals’
Super!!!!! I can copy my files now!!!! Thank you so much!!!!!
This helped me a lot to transfer photos from my Iphone to windows PC.
After continuous research for 2 nights, I could successfully transfer the photos. Heartfelt thanks to the person who has given this resolution!
Perfect it also worked for me. It seams like a problem on the phone with the real time conversion when copying from iphone to PC.
Thanks
Thanks a lot. It was easy as 3. step but I can not solve this on my own.
I had to use a usb port on the back of my PC for it to work.
I tried this and it worked too. Thank you
**SOLUTION** The solution is in the cameras settings. It is switched to save as HEIC and you can switch it back to saving as JPEGS. The only issue with that is that the JPEGS take up more room in the iPhone memory but it does resolve the issue.
From a compatible iOS Device running iOS 11 or later, launch Settings and select Camera.
Select Formats.
Change your iPhone camera format to Most Compatible. This will automatically save pictures as JPEG files and videos in the H264 format.
thank you so much! solved the problem!!
I am the king of the problem. I want the original .MOV files which are much larger and much better quality. I have to literally turn the phone off/on several times before I can copy files over 1G in size. I even opened a ticket with Apple and took weeks for someone to back to me a try and setup a logging system to capture the error..But that never happened either…
I do believe it is related to the amount of storage you have used up….
I ended up buying a second iPhone 8 with 64G of storage when I go out to shoot concerts and what ever else….My actual iPhone 8 with 264G when it gets over 200G is useless…
Believe me if there was a pattern, sequence, way to reproduce what to do to get large videos to copy I would have found it…
It comes down to 1 fact:
There is a HUGE bug in Apples IOS since they started using HEIC format, and they will not admit it, look into it, or even try to find a solution because their solution is like everyone else has stated here, set your phone to “keep original”…. Not the answer for me or many others.