Camera phone no longer talking to Macbook

[mistressploppy]

Can anyone clever help me?!

I have a Sony Ericsson w995 which up until yesterday worked fine with my MacBook - I just plug it in with the cable, the iPhoto thingy bounces and the photos are downloaded at the click of a button, no problem.

For some unknown reason this has stopped working - when I plug it in the iPhoto thing bounces, the phone name appears momentarily and then disappears, so I can't get my photos off.

What am I doing wrong? The only thing I can think of is I did put some pics on the Mac from my DHs iPhone, would this have messed things up? Can I manually find the phone when it's plugged in and force the pics off?!

Is there still an icon for the phone after this fracas with iPhoto? In which case you can force the photos in if you can get iPhoto to ro run independently. Otherwise

A) Make sure your system software is up to date (go to "Software Update..."in the Apple menu)

B) if that doesn't fix it throw away this file:

yourname/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoto.plist

where "yourname" is the name of your Home folder- the one in Users with the house icon

when iPhoto is not running, then run it again. Then it will have forgotten all about your Sony and the iPhone and be ready to start again. It won't have forgotten the photos themselves, though. I suppose I should caution you against doing this if you have changed the default location of the iPhoto library, but I guess if you've done that, you'd know how to reinstate it after deleting the preferences anyway.

If above doesn't work, do you have Bluetooth? Can you copy the photos over using that?

BTW what do you think of the Sony W995? I was thinking of getting one myself.

Thanks Prism, I can only see the phone icon in iPhoto for a second, then it disappears.

I've checked the software - all ok, and tried deleting the file - still not working!

I just don't understand why it brings up iPhoto straight away, recognises the phone for a second and then nothing

Could it be the cable???

W995 is a pretty good phone, wasted on me really, but I got it for the camera (8.1megapixels). It's also nice and neat and metally.....VERY good for music if you need a phone to do that.

Also, can't get bluetooth to work! The devices find each other ok but the connection fails repeatedly

I'm so sh*t

Right, now I can see the icon for the phone but it says there are no pics on it

OK. SO- what happens when you run iPhoto directly, without the W995 connected, by clicking on its icon in the Dock?

I appreciate this so much, prism.

Right, it opens iphoto fine - I can see all my pics, and the last download (from DH's iphone)

(Just tried again, it's back to not seeing the phone at all after the initial 2 seconds)

Here's something to try. Forget the phone for now. Open iPhoto, go to Preferences in the iPhoto menu, then at the bottom you should see "Connecting Camera Opens". You can set this to "No Application"- then you can run iPhoto first, then connect the phone, and see if the phone icon stays there (in the Finder as well as iPhone) which may get round the current problem. Reinstalling iPhoto would probably fix it too, if you fancy that (download from apple's website)- certainly won't do any harm.

Ok, I don't think iPhoto is the problem because I can't see the phone in Finder either

I'll probably get one of these later today and see for myself but it occurs to me that there are settings on the phone to do with "disk use" or something like that, that control whether it shows up as a connected drive when connected to a computer. Are you able to see if any other computers can see it?

BTW before I do- can the W995 be relied on not to make or answer calls by itself? I've been sticking to flip phones for a long time as I can't bear the fact that most non flip ones from time to time make calls by themselves when in your pocket (well, my pocket, anyway) but if the slider on the W995 actually works as a simple lock I shall invest in it.

Thanks Prism, I owe you one for all your help. I am planning to check out the updates for the phone as a friend of mine has it too and she said you need to do this from time to time.

I've never had a problem with it dialling itself - the slider seems to stop this because as you say, it locks the phone

Sorry, just realised - this is too late for you; did you get the phone today?

I didn't- got called to office for utterly pointless meeting so am still on my barely-alive W380. Will report back when I'm phoned-up.