Help [SOLVED] Problem Connecting Bionic to PC - PLEASE HELP!

[Droid_MC]

We have two droids, mine and my wife's. I can not get her phone to connect consistently. While mine has no issues. Seems to be a phone issue rather than drivers. Good place to start, but not the issue here.

 

[Droid_MC]

I am using the Motorola supplied cable and have this issue with my wife's phone, but not with mine. Her phone will not connect on either my pc or her pc. But my phone will connect on both pc's. Seems to be a phone based setting.

 

[dbtri68]

Thanks Duckster! I was totally brushing off the idea that it could be the cable until you mentioned a possible missing connector wire. I was using an old LG USB cable so I tried the official motorola cable that came with my bionic and it worked!
Thanks!
/db

Yes, I tried your suggestions but they did not work for me. My suspicions is that the older LG cable I tried did not work because it may have been missing a connector wire within the cable itself. Over on the Motorola forum, they are having some great discussions about this and it seems that using the original cable that came with the Bionic is solving their issues.

As for being able to use it on any page other than the home page, I have not much luck there. Some of this may have to do with the computer type as well (I'm using it on a Vista Laptop). I need to try it on my desktop Windows 7 (x64 bit) later.

 

[johnlgalt]

I'm using the same cables I used for my OG DROID - but, they were cables that I bought from monoprice - USB micro 5 pin cables.

I had no idea that the DROID (and other older Android-based phones) may have come with a USB micro 4 pin connector....but that would make perfect sense....

But, I thought that only USB mini came with a 4 and 5 pin variety - I thought that the ISO / IEE standard (or whoever makes standard for cables and such) mandated that all usb micro connectors had 5 pins, no less....

still weird....

 

[Duckster]

Thanks Duckster! I was totally brushing off the idea that it could be the cable until you mentioned a possible missing connector wire. I was using an old LG USB cable so I tried the official motorola cable that came with my bionic and it worked!
Thanks!
/db

I'm glad it all worked out for you DBtri68! I guess not all suggested solutions will help everyone, but it helps some. I haven't had any more problems since using the proper cables albeit it doesn't work for everyone. My old LG USB cables will charge my Bionic but it won't let me connect to my PC unrestricted.

 

[tomw3141]

I treid power-off power-on (reboot) and no help. Best I get is the external SD card, nothing internal. Only get internal if/when pull the SD card and battery, return battery and plug into a particular USB port! Using Motorola cord that came with Bionic - things were not even this good with other cables.

Asked Motorola about it. They sent me to a page where it says to ONLY use the cord that comes with the phone. They go on to say that if the procedure doesn't work, do a factory reset! I would rather pull the SD card and read it directly every time than do a factory reset (it takes so many hours to get settings right).
Here is the Motorola page (and I think its aimed at 2.2, not 2.3):

ANDROID 2.2 - Can't Connect to PC

I think there are some 2.3 pages about this issue.
We gotta keep asking Moto to fix this.

Did you try the solution I found ... turn it off and turn it on again?

My GUESS is that the condition is sometimes raised preventing it from recognizing the memoiry and the condtion is reset with a power off/power on.

I get the same result with the cable that came with ...

Droid X (last year)
Droid X Cradle (last year)
Bionic (this month)

This reset ALWAYS works for me.

(Also ... I do not have to have the Bionic on the Home screen when conecting the USB cable. The displayed screen seems to have no effect.)

... Thom

 

[johnlgalt]

I treid power-off power-on (reboot) and no help. Best I get is the external SD card, nothing internal. Only get internal if/when pull the SD card and battery, return battery and plug into a particular USB port! Using Motorola cord that came with Bionic - things were not even this good with other cables.

Asked Motorola about it. They sent me to a page where it says to ONLY use the cord that comes with the phone. They go on to say that if the procedure doesn't work, do a factory reset! I would rather pull the SD card and read it directly every time than do a factory reset (it takes so many hours to get settings right).
Here is the Motorola page (and I think its aimed at 2.2, not 2.3):

ANDROID 2.2 - Can't Connect to PC

I think there are some 2.3 pages about this issue.
We gotta keep asking Moto to fix this.

I hate to say it, but that is not nearly a majority of users by far. Have you considered trying to factory reset to see if it works? because if it does then it is an app you have installed that is blocking it....and thus it is not Moto's problem at all.

Also, if it only works when you're in a particular USB port, then you have far larger issues to begin with - either with the phone or with your PC, and you should get those checked out first.

How does it work (if at all) on a completely different PC?

 

[Thom]

I treid power-off power-on (reboot) and no help. Best I get is the external SD card, nothing internal. Only get internal if/when pull the SD card and battery, return battery and plug into a particular USB port! Using Motorola cord that came with Bionic - things were not even this good with other cables.

Asked Motorola about it. They sent me to a page where it says to ONLY use the cord that comes with the phone. They go on to say that if the procedure doesn't work, do a factory reset! I would rather pull the SD card and read it directly every time than do a factory reset (it takes so many hours to get settings right).
Here is the Motorola page (and I think its aimed at 2.2, not 2.3):

ANDROID 2.2 - Can't Connect to PC

I think there are some 2.3 pages about this issue.
We gotta keep asking Moto to fix this.

Are you in USB Mass Storage mode?

Id did not work for me once in about 100 times. When that happend I pulled the battery without touching the card.

Another thing ... I don't know how many USB srives you have shown ... my SD-EXT has always come up on the same drive letter. The SD came up on another andconsistently and it now is constently on another drive.

... Thom

 

[tomw3141]

I hate to say it, but that is not nearly a majority of users by far. Have you considered trying to factory reset to see if it works? because if it does then it is an app you have installed that is blocking it....and thus it is not Moto's problem at all.

Excellent point. And I will consider it if all else fails (or I just get fed-up).

Also, if it only works when you're in a particular USB port, then you have far larger issues to begin with - either with the phone or with your PC, and you should get those checked out first.

Yes and no, according to Motorola.. part of their description of how to fix this problem includes switching USB ports. But I have to agree, once things are fixed it should work with seamlessly any USB port.

How does it work (if at all) on a completely different PC?

I will check it out another XP PC tomorrow. It has ALWAYS worked fine on my Windows 7 machine, (64 bit), and with ANY USB cord! For this reason I can say that the phone seems to work, and wonder why some "blocking" application would know the difference between the two PC's drivers. I suppose there could still be some interaction between an application and the specifics of different drivers.. but that seems a bit of a stretch. Of course, its been years since I got my Computer Science degrees, so I am probably out of touch.

New development. I downloaded your pre-release USB driver 5.2.1 - and after a reboot the PC showed both drives and contents! Then, waited a while, disconnected, reconnected and only the external one shows up (another drive shows up but asks to put a disk in, always shows two drives and starts VZW VCast when USB connected). Rebooted phone (power off/on) still just external SD readable. Now both USB ports do the same (unsatisfactory) thing. This reminds me - the very first time I downloaded the Motorola latest version a few weeks ago I had the same experience. Worked once. Tried downloading it again, no change.

Also, when I switch to "PC Mode", on this machine I get two MTP device entries, one looks like a camera and is empty and another looks like a MP3 Player and has most of my files, although trying to open my DCIM, Camera seems to lock-up the explorer window (it has a lot of files, some pretty large videos). On my other XP computer the (single) MTP device allows DCIM data transfer to the PC only, looks like a camera to Photoshop, very different behavior on this PC.

Altogether, this is pretty messed up (but I must admit, getting slightly better). Now that I have a better driver and the right cord, maybe it is time for a factory reset. First I will try various sequences of booting the PC and the phone and whatever else I can think of. And, the overriding fact that a different PC OS works remains an important clue to me.

 

[johnlgalt]

Check your antivirus program - it might be locking the access to the drive because you're disconnecting too fast an it cannot finish scanning it....

 

[tomw3141]

Check your antivirus program - it might be locking the access to the drive because you're disconnecting too fast an it cannot finish scanning it....

Today I went to my work XP Laptop. In the past it has had the same problems. So, first I made sure the problems were unchanged with the actual Mot Bionic USB cable (problem not fixed even with Bionic reboot). Then I installed the Pre-release driver, and bingo, saw both drives. Unplugged and waited and tried again. Still good. Rebooted computer, no good. Rebooted phone, good again. Tried several reboots. Only way to be sure to get both internal and external to show up populated on the PC is to reboot the Bionic with the Motorola USB cable (on this Laptop with XP). I will report again if this fails in the future.

Now i just have one machine (XP at home) that does not work, even using the correct cable and Pre-release driver. I continue to be suspicious of the specific PC rather than the Bionic. The saga goes on, very good improvement, some work to be done.

 

[tomw3141]

Went home, connected Bionic with Mot USB cable. Typical, one disk shows external, other has no content (says "please insert disk"). Left USB cable connected, Power Off Bionic, Boot, both disks came up with content. If there are no other problems I assume all problems fixed all machines. Thanks for the help 'droid forum and especially johnlgalt for your advice and providing link to an actually useful driver!!!

PROBLEM SOLVED

Tom

Today I went to my work XP Laptop. In the past it has had the same problems. So, first I made sure the problems were unchanged with the actual Mot Bionic USB cable (problem not fixed even with Bionic reboot). Then I installed the Pre-release driver, and bingo, saw both drives. Unplugged and waited and tried again. Still good. Rebooted computer, no good. Rebooted phone, good again. Tried several reboots. Only way to be sure to get both internal and external to show up populated on the PC is to reboot the Bionic with the Motorola USB cable (on this Laptop with XP). I will report again if this fails in the future.

Now i just have one machine (XP at home) that does not work, even using the correct cable and Pre-release driver. I continue to be suspicious of the specific PC rather than the Bionic. The saga goes on, very good improvement, some work to be done.

 

[johnlgalt]

You're welcome - it's what I did for a living (this sort of troubleshooting) for 15 years now lol....including at Castle Cops (among other places, as well as in real life).

It takes a little while when I cannot get my own hands onto the device(s) in question, though. Thanks for being patient with the troubleshooting process.

 

[lstroyan]

I had a similar problem on an unrooted Bionic and the solution I found on another forum was getting rid of all apps that were installed into the Media Area (not by me, but by default) and rebooting. Settings->Apps-> Storage --> Media Area, look for green checks. (The problem probably only occurred with some, that were in memory when Bionic was trying to unmount the internal storage and couldn't).