Apple Mobile Device Service failed to start. How to fix?

You encounter an error reading “Apple Mobile Device Service failed to start” when installing iTunes or when installing the iOS drivers alone via the CopyTrans Drivers Installer? The below trouble-shooter will help you get the issue resolved.

Restart your PC

Restarting the computer may help more often than you think.

1. Disconnect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from the PC and restart the PC.

2. Keeping the iDevice disconnected, re-try the iTunes installation or the iOS drivers installation procedure via the CopyTrans Drivers Installer.

If this does not help, move on to the next section.

Restart the Apple Mobile Device (AMD) service

1. Click the Windows Start button and in the search box, type in services.msc

2. From the newly-opened Services window, look for the “Apple Mobile Device Service” and right-click on it. Choose “Properties”

3. If the service is already started, click on “Stop”, then back on “Start. If the service is “Stopped”, click on “Start”

   NOTE: If you receive an error message stating that the service cannot be started, continue directly with the next troubleshooting section.

4. Make sure that the “Startup type:” is set to “Automatic” and then hit “Apply”

5. Now restart the PC

6. Re-try installing iTunes, or installing the iOS drivers alone via CopyTrans Drivers Installer.

Uninstall all Apple and iTunes components

To automatically uninstall all Apple and iTunes components from the PC, follow the instructions from this tutorial How to completely uninstall iTunes and related Apple software

If for some reason, your PC won’t allow you to automatically uninstall all components, continue with these steps:

1. In Windows 7, open the Windows Start menu and select “Control Panel”. In Windows 10, press Windows key + X or right-click on the Windows Start menu.

2. Click on “Uninstall a program” under the “Programs” category:

3. Now uninstall any remaining Apple or iTunes component on your PC in the following order:

• iTunes

• Apple Software Update

• Apple Mobile Device Support

• Bonjour

• Apple Application Support x86 (iTunes 9 or later)

• Apple Application Support x64 (iTunes 9 or later)
  

Then, manually delete the following folders from your PC:

• C:\Program Files\iTunes\

• C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\

• C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\

Finally, restart the PC and attempt once more to install iTunes or the iOS drivers alone via CopyTrans Drivers Installer.

If the error message still appears, continue with the section below.

Find and correct corrupt Windows system components automatically

Your PC may refuse to start the Apple Mobile Device service if one or a number of Windows system files are corrupt. To try and sort this out, follow the steps below:

1. Ensure that Windows is up to date

2. Make sure you are logged as Windows user with administrative privileges and open an instance of Command prompt. To open Command prompt, click the Windows Start menu button, and in the search box type cmd.exe:

3. Right-click on cmd.exe search-result entry and choose “Run as administrator”:

4. In the opened Command prompt window, manually type in the following: sfc /scannow (do not copy/paste). Mind the space after “sfc”. Hit the Enter key:

5. Your PC will now automatically search for corrupt Windows system files and if possible – correct them. If the computer found any problematic files and fixed them, you can attempt once more to install iTunes or the iOS drivers via CopyTrans Drivers Installer.