Apple iPhone 4 not showing up in Windows Live Photogallery on Windows 7

This is for iPhone 4, but may also work on other versions of iPhone.

The problem I am having is that the iPhone does not show up when I press the “Import” button in Windows Live Photogallery, and it’s been driving me nuts.

So today I fixed the problem this way:

Procedure 1 (RECOMMENDED):
1. Connect the phone to your Windows PC
2. Open Programs from the Control Panel, and then click the Programs and Features link.
3. Locate and right click the Apple Mobile Device Support application, then choose Repair.
4. Locate and right click the Apple Application Support application, then choose Repair.
5. If you have opened Windows Live Photogallery, close and restart it, then click the “Import” button (top left).

Unfortunately it seems to me that I need to do that each time I connect my iPhone, so it is somehow reverted when I restart the computer. I really think someone at Apple or Microsoft should have done a better job to avoid these problems.

If this does not fix your problem, then I must admit that I also did the following before the procedure above:

Procedure 2 (NOT RECOMMENDED/STRONGLY DISCOURAGED):
1. Connect the phone to your Windows PC
2. Open Device Manager (Right click Computer, then choose Properties, then click the Device Manager option).
3. Under “Universal Serial Bus controllers” I found at the top an entry called something starting with Apple.
4. Uninstall the driver for this.
5. Repeat Procedure 1.

Problem now is that iTunes cannot detect the phone any more.
So… I will need to repair or reinstall iTunes, which is turning out to be a nightmare from hell.

To reinstall iTunes you need to uninstall (according to http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1925):
1. iTunes
2. Apple Software Update
3. Apple Mobile Device Support
4. Bonjour
5. Apple Application Support

I needed to uninstall the following also, although it did not say so on Apple’s web page so I am unsure the web page is up to date:
6. iCloud

Then restart your computer.

Then download the latest version of iTunes from Apple, and run the installation.

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

Freeing up space on your hard disks is an ever ongoing battle for some people, for instance if you at some point decided on a too small system partition (“10 Gigs must surely be enough?”).

So in the Windows directory (on Windows XP at least) there is a folder called “Installer” where many install files will be found. It may be tempting to just delete all files here, freeing up many gigs of space, but that could cause problems later, for instance if you want to upgrade some program that needs the old version to be uninstalled first.

So this is where the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility comes into play. Read this excellent blog post on where to get it and how to use it: http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/2007/01/31/how-to-safely-delete-orphaned-patches.aspx

Essentially after installing the utility, you may run a command that will delete orphaned installation files, that is install files for programs that are no longer on your system.

I managed to free up enough space to install MS VS 2008 Professional… :)