Help S3 charges via USB but not recognised by PC

[rapidsandroid]

I still can't get my laptop to do USB transfer of files between phone, even though I hear the beep on the phone for the connection & it shows the battery is charging. Tried Verizon but they were no help. Frustrating because I can no longer sync my music or move my photos around.
How does Kies Air work? I understand the concept, but are our files being put into a Samsung server during transfer between phone & computer? Privacy issues? thanks

 

[makiSG3]

for kiesAir your phone and computer have to be in same network. when you run kiesair, youre phone gives you local IP adress, which you enter in browser and you access phone. I use ES file manager - i recommend it.

 

[tonedef78]

I had the same issue. Phone charges but wouldnt get recognized my pc anymore.
Heres the fix.

1. Remove phone from PC and shutdown and remove battery to shut off phone.
2. Plug USB cable into PC and phone.
3. Put battery back in and boot phone but…
4. As the phone boots, hold down Volume up and down and dont let go until you see you are in safe mode on the phone. It should say safe mode on the front screen.
5. This should reboot your phone into download mode and install drivers that are needed.
6. Your pc will indicate and recognize the phone.
7. Now if you check the notification drop down on your phone you should see USB/MTP option there in the notification area. MTP should be checked.

After its installed you should be able to see your phone on your pc and SD card if you have one. You can now restart the phone to normal mode and it should work from then on.

 

[rapidsandroid]

for kiesAir your phone and computer have to be in same network. when you run kiesair, youre phone gives you local IP adress, which you enter in browser and you access phone. I use ES file manager - i recommend it.

Do Samsung Servers hold on to our files? Or is the connection between phone & computer a direction with no 3rd party receiving our files? thanks

 

[rapidsandroid]

I had the same issue. Phone charges but wouldnt get recognized my pc anymore.
Heres the fix.

1. Remove phone from PC and shutdown and remove battery to shut off phone.
2. Plug USB cable into PC and phone.
3. Put battery back in and boot phone but

 

[makiSG3]

Do Samsung Servers hold on to our files? Or is the connection between phone & computer a direction with no 3rd party receiving our files? thanks

I am not sure, but i think when using kiesair samsung doesn't have access to your files.

 

[JJMorrocco]

I have had the same problem with my new S3. I bought one for me and one for wife. Mine I installed a 32GB SD card. Hers I have nto yet. Mine would not connect via usb - hers would. If I dismounted my card it would connect. Mount card and it disappears.

Talked ot Samsung tech last night he blamed card. I reformatted card, and everything worked fine. I then tried to load my music via Kies (new to me). I thought I told it to load to SD card but this morning it showed my phone as overfull, with the card being empty.

Back to trial and error (swear) tonight.

I will keep you posted.

 

[s3sam]

had to change cables and now it works on both phones droidx and samsung 3s

 

[gtgirl88]

Mine had issues not recognizing it but still would charge. got an update and now it seems to work fine now.

 

[ktchong]

Mine had issues not recognizing it but still would charge. got an update and now it seems to work fine now.

What update?

 

[tgrace007]

Hi all,

I had the same problem with my s3 Sunday. Was using it to take photos for eBay items. Worked until I tried to transfer today. Talk about frustration! Tried to delete/download drivers on PC, etc. Tried switching USB cables. Nothing worked.

ninja636rider's solution (and edkus' quote in his post) worked like a charm for me as well! So simple, it seems ridiculous!
All I did was shut it down, popped out the sim and battery, popped them back in, flipped it on and plugged in the USB cable and..
Just like magic, s3 showed "connected as a media device".

Thanks for this thread, and the forum itself!!!arty:
Tom

 

[SteveFury]

I got an accessory kit with my S3 when I got it last October. The kit included some sleeves, a car charger, screen protectors, and a USB cord.

The USB cord in the accessory kit would charge the phone but not connect USB. I plug it in to the PC and nothing happens what so ever.

I was unaware of a cord in the box the phone came from so I bought a heavy duty cord from a chain electronics store. My phone connected wonderfully by USB.

I complained to the at&t store and they suggested using the cord in the box. I found the cord in the box and it connected to my PC once. Just once. Now, just like my other accessory cord it will only charge my phone.
But the heavy chain store cord connects every time.

I've had the accessory cord plugged into the adapter next to my bed table and it hasn't been yanked. It has really become defective... as I need to fiddle with the USB end to get it to even charge anymore.

I have the very strong belief the shipped cords are utterly worse than crap and I'd bet a lot of these connection problems are due to bad cords.

 

[JJMorrocco]

So far so good. I had reformatted the SD micro, nad have had no issues connecting. I have also installed a micro SD in my wifes S3 and formated it, it still connnects fine.

One thing I did find out is you need to be aware of which mode your transfer is in. For some reason my wifes was in picture mode - sure it connects fine but you can only see the folders and picture files. I was looking forher vidoe files. Took a while to find the solution.

Cheers

 

[ktchong]

Is everyone here who's been having this problem has a rooted phone?

My phone is rooted... I don't remember having troubles with USB connection before my phone was rooted.

 

[cent1nu11]

A while back, I had the same issues with my old Galaxy S2 and had the same problems when I upgraded to the Galaxy S3 on my home computer. I uninstalled and reinstalled various versions of the Samsung drivers and nothing works. I also have the same drivers at my work computer, but it always detected the device with the USB cable. Finally, I uninstalled Kies and all the Samsung drivers on my home PC and switched USB cables with the ones at work. It immediately detected the device and even installed the relevant Samsung drivers. So the issue is the USB cables and not all cables are made the same. It seems to be the connections on the cable. I have one USB cable that some times work. I found that I have to jiggle it before it detects the device.

Hope this helps.

 

[bobolinko]

For all that are having problems:

Go here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=32906335#post32906335

and follow all the directions in the writeup. Worked for all my friends that were having problems.
Good Luck!
Aloha

 

[buttergreedy]

Just today, I encountered this particular issue whereby my PC (running Windows 7) would not recognize my Samsung S3 when plugged in over a USB cable. I reviewed many of the posts here and its amazing at how many different solutions have been proposed.

For me, the solution that I quote here - the simplest one of the bunch it would seem - worked like a charm. I wanted everyone to know that in case you start looking through this and thinking you might have to uninstall and reinstall drivers on your PC or perhaps do backflips on your phone to get it to work. It might be that you don't.

More detail on my situation: I happen to have two Samsung S3s - one for personal and one for work. This happened to help me better diagnose the situation. Lucky for me! Both are running Jelly Bean. My personal S3 stopped being recognized by my PC over USB. My work S3 connected fine. OK. So that perhaps rules out the USB cable (which is not even a Samsung supplied USB cable but rather an older Blackberry USB cable ), and perhaps it rules out the drivers on the PC too. Another point - just before this happened, I added a 32GB SD card to my personal S3 whereas my work S3 only has the original phone memory. THAT is the only change I did since the last time I connected it to my PC. Hmmmmm.....

So, I followed the instructions on this particular post (leaving the SD card untouched in the slot). These instructions cured the issue. Once my S3 rebooted and I plugged it back into my PC, the PC recognized a new USB device and installed drivers for it. Once this was done, I could access both the phone memory and the SD card memory through Windows explorer. Also, Kies launched and recognized my phone too.

Hope this helps someone. Good luck!

I did this as well and it worked perfectly. Always the simplest solutions that work the best, I agree. I took the battery out, took the SIM card out, put them back in, rebooted the S3, reconnected to my pc and the USB PC connection came up fine. Windows installed device drivers, and all was fine.

Previously, I also tried uninstalling Kies, reinstalling it, installing an older samsung usb driver. Didn't work. Factory reset did not work. I even tried using that code to access the usb configuration, which did not work at all. Simplest is best!

 

[anno1404]

I registered just to say: Same solution worked for me:

All I did was shut it down, popped out the sim and battery, popped them back in, flipped it on and plugged in the USB cable and..
Just like magic, s3 showed "connected as a media device".

Hi all,

I had the same problem with my s3 Sunday. Was using it to take photos for eBay items. Worked until I tried to transfer today. Talk about frustration! Tried to delete/download drivers on PC, etc. Tried switching USB cables. Nothing worked.

ninja636rider's solution (and edkus' quote in his post) worked like a charm for me as well! So simple, it seems ridiculous!
All I did was shut it down, popped out the sim and battery, popped them back in, flipped it on and plugged in the USB cable and..
Just like magic, s3 showed "connected as a media device".

Thanks for this thread, and the forum itself!!!arty:
Tom

 

[ktchong]

The January firmware update fixed the problem for me.

 

[bmoliver]

I registered just to say: Same solution worked for me:

All I did was shut it down, popped out the sim and battery, popped them back in, flipped it on and plugged in the USB cable and..
Just like magic, s3 showed "connected as a media device".

Mine stopped connecting after a "suggested" Microsoft update to the Samsung USB driver. I uninstalled the driver and went back to my earlier version for AT&T and that fixed the issue. Running Win 7 64 bit.

 

[sillyandsome]

Thanks for putting your note up -- way back when -- this is exactly what worked for me. Mine is the Samsung Galaxy S3 .. Turn it off, pull the cover - the battery - the sim - the sd card (why not & who cares, for just a moment) - put it all back together and ... Done.

Thanks!

 

[xfullboost]

registered just to say what finally worked for me.

I removed the battery, sim card, and sd card. put them back in, powered the phone on and then plugged it into my windows 7 internet connected pc. it then was finally recognized by my pc and installed all of the drivers and software itself automatically.

that seemed to do the trick.

 

[sze]

Used Galaxy S3 and S2 for two months no problem with Kies, then suddenly stopped recognising USB although it did charge both phones.
Spoken to Orange for 2 x hours and Samsung for 1 x hour and problem still unresolved.
However, if this solution works for anyone else, Samsung may have a sneaky way of getting you to part with your cash.
1. The phones stopped working with the USB cables supplied after an Android update was installed on both phones.
2.Orange and Samsung suggested that the computers may be faulty!!!!!!!!
3. unplug the USB cable from the S3 mains charger....the one with the two shiny ends.
4. open Kies and use this USB cable. The two phones suddenly connected no problem.
5. Speaking to an IT engineer, he said that this cable seems to have a voltage limiter unlike normal universal USB cables which seems very odd.
6. Both phones now connect everytime with this cable so try it for yourselves. If it works, why are Samsung saying nothing or is it a way to get you to purchase extra 'shiny' voltage limiting cables.

Million thanks!
I got a S3 LTE (brand new) and have the same problem. It took me 4 days (more than 15 working hours) to find the fix. Finally, it turn out to be the USB cable came with the phone package. It once worked, but only for a few times. Then it totally failed. Never thought of this can happen.
For reader who don't understand, the case is that when the phone connect to PC, it will be charging by USB but no device was detected by the PC. No any setting in the PC and phone can be done. I've installed USB drivers, Kies, uninstall and reinstall, set phone MTP+ADB, debug mode on/off etc. Still, no device can be seen.
As the USB cable was brand new from the package and at the first time I connected the USB cable to PC, it can show "new device found" but cannot be identified. So I thought it should be driver problem and do all kinds of installation I can find but no use.
Finally, I used the micro USB cable my wife was using and the phone is now connected to PC properly!

 

[Lemosine]

Guys i have tryed everything in this thread, and nothing works i even talked to AT&T and nothing. It was working fine then one day i cant connect it to the PC or anything, It will only charge. I cant connect it to my CD player in the car it just charges, Xbox, Laptop, dock player nothing..... it only charges, when it use to connect to all them things all the time. i put it in download mode and it connected to the PC . I thought oh ok maybe it is fixed. Rebooted, still just charges but not detecting a USB connection. No options in the pull down menu, nada.... It is really frustrating.

 

[Lemosine]

Just wanted to say i got my phone working, i downloaded Odin to my pc and the Stock JellyBean Firmware (Rom). Went to recovery mode erased everything, made sure i took my sd card out. Then i went into download mode, opened up Odin. Clicked PDA, searched for the folder i had to stock jellybean ROM in. Clicked start did its work, phone booted up and it connected and everything was fixed! now recovering from backup!