Disabling iPhone Photo Import under Windows Vista
By Bob Plankers on Sep 29, 2008 in How To
In hindsight this seems obvious, but several Google searches did not reveal the answer so I am documenting it now in the hopes that others who are stymied by this can do something about it, too. As always if there’s a better way to do this leave me a comment. Thanks!
I was being annoyed by Windows importing and tagging the photos on my iPhone, often several times per sync. I want to be able to plug my iPhone in, have it sync, and then leave. Instead I’d get “No new pictures or videos were found on this device” dialogs, requiring that I click OK. If I didn’t click OK fast enough I’d get “This device is already being used by ‘Windows’” as it tried syncing a second time:
Turns out the fix is easy. With your phone connected to the PC go into Control Panel, then into AutoPlay. Scroll down to the bottom, under Devices, and change the action from “Import pictures using Windows” to “Take no action” (or whatever you want it to do). Then click Save:
That’s it. Like I said, easy to do once you know where to look.
8 Comment(s)
By Dan Hallock on Sep 29, 2008 | Reply
Some interesting options there — “Microsoft Office Word using Microsoft Office Word.” Even notwithstanding the repetition, who wants to open Word when they plug in a mobile device?
By Bob Plankers on Sep 29, 2008 | Reply
Perhaps it’s a USB flash drive with documents on it… Generally, though, I agree. I’d see the “Open device to view files…” option as a better one for that.
By Dan Hallock on Sep 29, 2008 | Reply
My thumb drive doesn’t show up as a device here; it’s governed by the “Pictures” preference. (It has Portable Thunderbird, ZAngband, and a bunch of OpenOffice files, but Vista pretty reliably calls it “pictures” as far as AutoPlay is concerned. I think it’s because ZAngband uses .raw as one of its file extensions.)
By Dan Hallock on Sep 29, 2008 | Reply
And I forgot to mention what makes that interesting, which is that Word isn’t an option for “Pictures” or even “Mixed Content,” even though it is for the phone. In fact, the phone is the only item in this panel where Word’s an option.
By Nick on Oct 14, 2008 | Reply
I have almost the opposite problem.
For a while my computer (running Windows Vista) was happily downloading photos off my iPhone on do my computer’s hard drive.
But for some reason now it doesn’t respond at all when I connect the iPhone now. iTunes still works fine and syncs well, but Windows doesn’t even see it as a connected device.
Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can get it working again?
By David on Oct 22, 2008 | Reply
Any ideas how to defeat this with Windows XP?
By NoMojoMofo on Nov 17, 2008 | Reply
David…To defeat in XP:
- connect your IPhone
- In Windows Explorer, ‘explore’ to My Computer\Apple IPhone
- Right click Properties
- Go to Events tab, and check “No Action”
By David on Nov 18, 2008 | Reply
Excellent! Thanks!