Several times lately when I’ve tried to sync my iPad it’s failed to complete the backup stage, even after 10-12 hours. If you force-quit iTunes and try again iTunes will skip the backup with the error message:
“iTunes could not backup the iPad “Chris’s iPad” because a session could not be started with the iPad”
I did a little research to find a solution, here’s what works for me:
- Quit or Force-Quit iTunes
- Delete your old backup: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
- Delete all files from ~/Library/Lockdown and /var/db/lockdown
- Reboot Mac
- Reboot iPad (hold Home and Power buttons until Apple logo appears)
- Run iTunes
- Select Reset Warnings and Reset Cache in iTunes Preferences > Advanced
Hope this helps someone else.
Thanks. I had this problem, and google pointed to many places (suggesting things like removing iPod cache etc.). None of them worked until I hit your page. I didn’t remove the backup, but removed the lockdown files and reset warnings and cache in iTunes. That seemed to convince iTunes to backup my iPad once again. Thanks again!
I’m glad someone else found this useful! Incidentally, when I got my iPad 2 I chose to reinstall everything instead of restoring from a backup, and so far the problem hasn’t reoccured.