If your computer suddenly stops recognizing that there are new photos on your cellphone
I’m writing this as a public service. I hope to spare at least one person from the same sort of 5-hour effort I recently went through when my computer suddenly and mysteriously refused to load any new photos from my cell phone.
In fact, it wouldn’t even recognize that they existed. “No new photos found” was the message, despite well over a hundred of them, ready and waiting. A search for things such as “why can’t my computer find new photos on my android?” and many variations on that theme yielded an infuriating list of site after site explaining how to load photos onto a computer, interspersed with sites with complicated instructions that didn’t work to fix my problem.
Many hours and tons of frustration later, I tried the only thing left: I changed the charging cord that connected my phone to my computer. And voila! Cured.
This makes no sense to me. Why would a cord that’s functioning perfectly fine to charge the phone, and doing perfectly well at connecting the phone (the computer recognized the phone and was checking for photos in the usual manner) fail to actually locate those photos? What does a cord have to do with it?
But folks, if you ever have a problem like the one I had, do yourself a favor, save yourself hours of hair-pulling exasperation, and just change that cord.
Or, just install the free version of Dropbox on your phone and computer.
Photos move over WiFi (and 4G if you allow) automatically from phone to computer.
If you are security minded, turn off including location data in your photos.
Edward:
I’m way too security-minded (or, if you prefer, paranoid) to use methods like that.
That’s a good one. You know the old saying about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I’ve discovered many instances that this is an intelligent tactic when dealing modern digital hardware and software. The software is too “adaptive” or state dependent to give stable, predictable, and repeatable results.
Possibly if you had merely disconnected and reconnected the old cable a few times it would have worked. If the connector contacts are a little dirty, that can clean them a little bit.
While the old USB hardware was simple, the newer stuff is much more complicated; i.e. USB ver. 3.0 and USB-C.
Even with the older stuff used the tiny USB micro-B connector got very popular, and I believe it was never really correctly designed to handle 1/2+ amp charging currents. Plus those connector contacts are very tiny and more fragile than with the bigger connectors.
Finally, when you are pushing very high data rates with GHz signals, the exact characteristics of the wire inside the cable itself become an issue. Older cables might not work well with newer hardware. Could be an operating system update activated something new or faster data rates. Ethernet cables have progressed from Cat5 wire, to Cat5+, to Cat6 and beyond just to handle the higher bandwidths.
The cord contains at lest four individual wires; the cable gets bent repeatedly and over time the wires flexed, flex, flex, flex, and eventually they will fail (break), with no connection, no data transfer. The wires that conduct power to charge are not the same ones that transmit data. I’d have to ask an Electrical Engineer co-worker to be sure. But you fixed it already!
My android-based smartphone automatically installed some new software that included a battery hog. I assume that was during an update. Suddenly my phone was almost totally run down at the end of the day, rather than down only to about 83 percent – I’d hardly be using it at all, if it weren’t for all the robo-calls. I deleted that app when I found out what was going on. Then I found that whereas I’d set the phone up initially to store photos on the SD card, it was no longer storing them there. Having found that out, I did manage to switch it back. And somewhere along the way I ran into the identical problem you described: a cable that should have been usable with the phone wasn’t, but another one was. Just wait until the machines _really_ take over.
The 4 wires inside a USB cable are not usually the same size. the powering ones tend to be a larger gauge to carry more current, so often they last a bit longer than the thinner data portions.
There is a $17 solution for transfer of large numbers of photos and documents be ptween smart phones and computers. Check out the suntrsi TF/SD card reader.
Great to have on vacations overseas when you take hundreds of digital photos, filling up your smart phone or iPad storage. You can plug it into iPhones, Androids, iPads, laptops, microSD cards. Store on microSD cards and then transfer to you home computer via direct connection.
TommyJay,
Very true.
Also, sometimes a moribund device that has sat (powered off and unused) for a couple of years will turn out to have been miraculously resurrected sometime since it was set on the shelf to be taken to the undertaker’s. I speak from experience with an Acer laptop that I got 10 years ago and that is still going strong.
A very long time ago when I consulted on financial software, whenever a client called up with an issue, the first suggestion was to reboot the computer. 99% of the time, it worked to resolve the issue.
So, even now, I reboot or even turn off and return after a glass of wine. Most of the time, the issue has resolved itself. Then, if I call support, I can tell them that I shut down, rebooted, cleared caches, etc.
I just realized that i didn’t get my printouts – I turned off the printer and wow – they are printing.
BTW – I still have a flip phone because it is indestructible one (ATT/Samsung Rugby), it still works, and I have an excuse not to text.
Those who read BYTE magazine know Pournelle’s first law for computing issues: check your connections.
Seems to hold true these days too
Liz: Well said on all accounts.
Rodander on June 10, 2019 at 6:18 pm said:
Those who read BYTE magazine know Pournelle’s first law for computing issues: check your connections.
Seems to hold true these days too
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When I first started doing commercial programming (not quite in the age of magnetic core, but close), and took a turn at customer support (proprietary software, so limited clientele), my first question was always, “Is the computer plugged in and turned on?”
There was no automatic back-up in those days, the stations all used big magnetic disks. We had the clerks semi-convinced that if they failed to back-up each night the computer would self-destruct.
I borrowed that one from the post-docs at one of my summer jobs, running (babysitting) the computer that recorded data from the collider in the nuclear lab. They DID have me convinced that if I let the mag tape run off the source spool during an experiment, the collider would blow up.
What can I say — I was just the junior labbie.
They had a great comic book collection in the back room, though, and let me have one of their reference books with all the FORTRAN sub-programs for mathematical formulae (proto-macros, if you will, in dead-tree format), which I used for the next few years.
I’ve been bitten by flaky cables and occasionally flaky ports. It’s a classic thing to check, when baffled.
I’ve gone OCD trying to resurrect bricked music players before telling myself, “It’s Chinatown, Jake.” Still bugs me software guys (I guess) could write code so sloppy the device wouldn’t reset properly after cycling the power.
Been there, done that. A current frustration is with charging on a particular surge protector at work. Two of the plugs will inevitably cause a “moisture detected” error, which requires a reboot of the device and then use of a different outlet.
huxley & Dwaz – you guys do know Gremlins are real?
Yes, but you never see them on the road any more.
One little trick I’ve discovered.
If you’re saving pictures (or whatever) in the external memory card, you can just take it out, place in a Micro SD to USB adapter, and use it as you’d use any standard USB stick.
Something like this
http://img.dxcdn.com/productimages/sku_412746_1.jpg
I use it to control books and scores in the tablet I use as a reader, and it comes in handy, you don’t need the device to be on, it always works, it’s fast and you can move, save or delete as you’d do in any USB device.
Dwaz on June 11, 2019 at 12:56 am said:
Yes, but you never see them on the road any more.
* *
Zing!
AesopFan on June 10, 2019 at 10:49 pm said:
huxley & Dwaz – you guys do know Gremlins are real?
I haven’t met them.
All of this technology buzz sounds like just Star Trek to me.
If you use a W10 PC… and you login via a Microsoft account… and you have an Android phone… OneDrive is your friend.
Photos will sync automatically to your PC via WiFi and the cloud.
If you install the My Phone app on your ‘Droid, you can use the desktop app likewise for your last 10 photos.
It’s simpler and more trouble-free than cable or microSD procedures.
I haven’t used a cable for data transfers from my smartphone for at least a couple of years.