Newbie has an Apple meltdown

[foxhunter]

Hey ya'll, it's Friday, grab a beer, sit back and laugh at my story of how one little phone turned this otherwise intelligent adult into a raving lunatic - in ONE day!

I bought an iPhone 4, 32Gb from BestBuy one week ago. I only wanted the 16Gb, and was told they were in stock when I called ahead, but when I got there 15 minutes later was told that they weren't stocking the ($200) 16Gb version at all. But they were happy to sell me the ($300) 32Gb. I relented and knowingly accepted the bait and the switch. Long sigh...

Filled out paperwork, gave the nice tech girl my old phone for the de- and re-activations, SIM card transfer, etc... Picked out a really good case. Refused to be suckered into BB insurance - thanks to research I had done here! Paid for it all and walked away from the counter and immediately went to call my husband. There were no contacts. No phone numbers. No nothing transferred from my old phone.

Went back to the (less) nice tech girl at the counter and asked her why she hadn't transferred my SIM card info? She claims they can't transfer any contact info from my perfectly functioning - but OLD - Moto SIM card to the nice, pretty, currently useless - but NEW - iPhone 4 . WTF? I'm supposed to reenter 200 or so names and numbers? (That SIM transfer worked just fine on the Samsung Captivate that I had for 28 days before deciding I would be better off with the iPhone!)

So, I go home, not quite as happy as I should have been with my new toy, but excited to start playing with it. Let's call the absence of my old SIM card info Problem 1. Problem 2 shows up right away when I cannot connect to my wi-fi router. Fiddle, go online for tech support to Netgear, Apple, then my ISP, all with no luck. I live in an Edge area, so wi-fi is pretty important! 3G line ends less than 1/2 mile away. Decide to leave the wi-fi issue for awhile and do something else.

I know - I'll get started with iTunes! I had downloaded it a couple of weeks ago while trying to decide whether to go iPhone or Droid. Launch it and get error message that it wasn't installed properly, (Problem 3) but it (or some facsimile of iTunes) comes up anyway. I look around a bit and then decide that I'll try to load a CD. Manage that successfully. Went to add the album art and wound up in iStore land, and managed to get an account set up. Still wouldn't give me the art... (Problem 4? Maybe just 3.5...)

Well, hell, forget the art for now, let's see if I can manage a successful first-ever sync with my fancy new iPhone 4 that I paid too much for.... Well, yeah, you guessed it, no such luck. First attempt, iTunes could not "find" my iPhone connection. (P5!) Unplug, shut down PC, reboot, retry iTunes - with same error message as before and same results. Now uninstall iTunes, reinstall iTunes, run iTunes, get different error message upon launch. (P6) Try to sync and HOORAY! there's my phone and sync starts, and goes, and goes, and goes forever lost in sync land. Finally realized that this was not normal. (P7) Shut down and did the uninstall/reinstall again and next sync gets to about the same point as before and completely crashes my PC. Twice. (P8 and P9)

I've now been at this for about 8 hours and my nerves are completely fried and I am on the verge of hurling my fancy new iPhone out of my office door with a straight shot to the rock fireplace in the den. I can envision the pretty screen shattering on the rocks...

Regain control of my senses before I create Problem 10. Carefully extract the phone from the pretty blue Otter Defender case that the very nice tech girl at Best Buy had installed for me before I left the store. I repackaged the case. I turned the phone off. I repackaged the phone and the few bits that came with it. I put the re-boxed case and phone and receipts all back in the Best Buy bag. That bag sat on my desk - mocking me - for 6 days. I went about my daily activities with NO mobile phone! Guess what? I survived!

But I have never in my life felt so STUPID and totally incompetent as I have since buying that phone. Yesterday, I got it out of the box. And turned it on. And started over...

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'm seriously asking for help. Gotta pour a glass of wine for myself and feed the horses first...

 

[big9erfan]

For your problem with the contacts, here's the deal.

- BestBuy is bad at customer service. If you have a nearby Apple store, you can make an appointment and a "Genius" will copy your sim contacts off the old sim and into the iPhone ( it doesn't store contacts on the sim ). If you don't have an Apple store nearby, your local AT&T store should be able to help you out as well ( and you probably won't have to make an appointment ).

Problem 2: Wifi- what kind of router is it? Does it even see your router?

Problem 3 ( no album art ) - this means the album name & artist don't match exactly what iTunes has on record. If you modify the settings for the songs to match artist & album, it should get the album art just fine.

 

[anon(4698833)]

Alot of bad luck for you...the sim thing is a given, but there's a few things you could do to sync contacts quicker than just manually inputting them, especially if you have them in your address book or outlook, there's always a usb transfer too (though that takes more time than the others)...

Ive never had a wifi problem on any of my iPhones (or any phones with wifi for that matter), so i couldnt help you there...i found it to be a piece of cake, and even some of the really secure networks i connect to were pretty effortless to setup.

The iTunes problem i see as just being one key issue...you use a PC.

...hope it works out for you!

 

[Smlk]

Oh geez, it's a wonder you didn't return it already!

 

[noaim]

you can add albumn art by finding it on the internet and right clicking on a song and hit get info in the final tab you can add your albumn art

 

[LazyStarGazer]

Sorry to hear you're having such an ordeal with your IPhone foxhunter.

Problem 3 ( no album art ) - this means the album name & artist don't match exactly what iTunes has on record. If you modify the settings for the songs to match artist & album, it should get the album art just fine.

I'm not sure where you change these settings, but I will definitely look for them later when I'm home.

you can add albumn art by finding it on the internet and right clicking on a song and hit get info in the final tab you can add your albumn art

I'll try this too. Almost half of my albums have no artwork.

UPDATE: Thanks to your suggestions, and this: http://forum.tipb.com/iphone-forum/171552-incorrect-album-artwork.html I got 'er done

 

[ghostface147]

Well look on the bright side. I don't have the issues you do.

 

[LazyStarGazer]

Well look on the bright side. I don't have the issues you do.

"Many of you may be wondering: how will this affect me...Al Franken."

 

[iPhoneScarlett]

I changed from the Torch to the iPhone and the AT&T store had no problem transferring my info from my sim to the iPhone. I also bought the 32GB although intentionally, however, I was told they are getting more of the 32GB in than the 16GB. On your wifi issue, I just did a search and it located my router. I had to input the security info and it connected with no issues. Every day I learn a little more about how to do things so don't give up. I think you will be very happy with the iPhone once you work thru your issues.

 

[foxhunter]

Hey Thanks for the tips so far! Wasn't sure anybody would even read to the end of my story. But it was cathartic for me! So current status of things:

P1 - No SIM card xfer - I had already decided that the BestBuy tech was blowing me off. And already thought about both the USB transfer option or sheepishly going back to my buddy at the AT&T store (the one who talked me into the Samsung that I returned) and asking for his help. Thanks to big9erfan and SeanHRCC for confirming those options. This is actually a small problem. Although I don't WANT to do it, I CAN, if no other options, manually reenter the stuff.

P2 - WiFi issue - FIXED!!! I have a combo cable modem/wireless router that was installed by my ISP. Yesterday, I finally found perhaps the only person with a brain in the support dept of my ISP and found that somehow they had changed security and address info since the original install - w/o bothering to let me know. So that hurdle has been cleared.

P3/4 - No Album art - also fixed that - at least for the one CD I have loaded so far! Not sure what was different, except...

P5 thru infinity - iTunes and sync problems. I need help here guys. With a clear head and having fixed the wi-fi, I decided to tackle the iTunes thing. Kudos (I think) to Apple support for clear advice on COMPLETELY uninstalling all things apple from my PC to set up a fresh re-install of iTunes 10. I was able to launch iTunes with NO error messages. My one CD was still there and I did get the album art. And I thought maybe I had found the light, until...

I tried to sync the phone. Started off OK, seemed to be working faster, I wandered off for a bit and came back to a glaring Application Error screen for com.apple.IE.client.exe and warning about exception breakpoint having been reached. Tried to sync again, and same result. Googled the error message and found that I was not alone, but unfortunately, have not yet found a fix.

I did at least get some data xfer to the phone- it has picked up all my email addys from Outlook, but that's about it. When I go to iTunes on my phone, I cannot find the one CD I put into iTunes on my PC. In fact, the iTunes screen that comes up on my phone looks like the store and nothing like the basic home iTunes screen on the PC. Any ideas? I don't know if the music synced and I can't find it? Or if it did nt sync at all....

So, now I have wi-fi fixed. But still no real functionality since I don't have the iTunes fixed.

So, how do I fix the iTunes error? And I still need to have a successful sync.

I've started a LoSQ (List of Stupid Questions). But will wait to get to that when (IF?) I can actually run iTunes AND sync to my phone.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[Roo Zilla]

If you have access to another computer, try a sync on that. If it does the same thing, odds are something is wrong with your phone.